Can't And Won't
  • Published: 27 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241968086
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99

Can't And Won't

Formats & editions
Paperback
27 May 2015
EBook
5 Jun 2014
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A sparkling collection of pithy wit and formal inventiveness from one of the greatest short-story writers alive

With titles like 'A Story of Stolen Salamis', 'Letters to a Frozen Pea Manufacturer', 'A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates', and 'Can't and Won't', the stories in this collection illuminate particular moments in ordinary lives and find in them the humorous, the ironic and the surprising.

Above all the stories revel in and grapple with the joys and constraints of language - achieving always the extraordinary, unmatched precision which makes Lydia Davis one of the greatest contemporary writers on the international stage.
  • Published: 27 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241968086
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and several collections of short fiction, the latest of which is Samuel Johnson Is Indignant. She is also the translator of numerous works from the French by, among others, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve and Michel Leiris, and was recently named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.

Also by Lydia Davis

Essays Two
Essays
The End of the Story
Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle
The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
See all

Praise for Can't And Won't

The most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years

John Freeman, Boston Globe

Profound, beautiful, moving. You will go back to a little gem that has wormed its way into your mind and stuck there, and discover that it is indeed a little gem, which sparkles a different way each time and flashes with a brief beauty or hidden meaning

Susan Hill, Spectator

Davis hints insistently at how abundant nothingness can be when we bother to look at it

Joshua Cohen, Times Literary Supplement

Among my most favourite writers. Read her now!

A. M. Homes

Can't and Won't shows Davis using precise language to articulate the kind of ideas and impressions which are usually left to float around the subconscious

Max Liu, Independent