Five Very Short Stories
Translated by Lydia Davis
There are people who claim that in your old age you may be comforted by a pet, but I believe that a pet just accentuates grief and loneliness.
Greg Drasler was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He is currently an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute of Art and has previously taught at Princeton University. His work can be seen at drasler.com.
Lydia Davis is the author, most recently, of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) and a new translation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (Viking Penguin, 2010). Her “Ten Stories from Flaubert” and “Some Notes on Translation” appeared in recent issues of The Paris Review. She has just lately begun translating from the Dutch.
A.L. Snijders was born in 1937 in Amsterdam. In 2006, his first collection of “zkv’s” (“zeer korte verhalen” or “very short stories”—a term he invented) was published by AFdH Uitgevers. Several collections followed, including De Mol en andere dierenzkv’s (The Mole and Other Very Short Animal Stories, AFdH, 2009). In November 2010, Snijders was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize, one of the three most important literary prizes in Holland.
