Davis was announced as the winner of the fifth edition of the award at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She was chosen from a list of 10 eminent contenders, including Kannada writer Ananthamurthy.
The prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or available in translation in English.
Davis is best known for her short stories, a number of them among the shortest stories ever written. Her work defies generic classification and she has been described as "the master of a literary form largely of her own invention". Much of her writing may be seen under the aspect of philosophy or poetry or short story, and even the longer pieces may be as short as two or three pages.
"Lydia Davis' writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind," Professor Sir Christopher Ricks said while announcing the winner. "Just how to categorise them? Should we simply concur with the official title and dub them stories? Or perhaps miniatures? Anecdotes? Essays? Jokes? Parables? Fables? Texts? Aphorisms, or even apophthegms? Prayers, or perhaps wisdom literature? Or might we settle for observations?"
Davis, who lives in New York, is a professor of creative writing at the University at Albany, the capital of New York state.
The Man Booker International Prize has previously been awarded to Ismail Kadare (2005), Chinua Achebe (2007), Alice Munro (2009) and Philip Roth (2011).
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