An author who pens stories the length of a sentence has scooped this year's Man Booker International Prize, in London.

American writer Lydia Davis has written some short stories of conventional length - but most range from 1 to 3 pages, while others are just a paragraph or sentence long.

The prize is presented once every two years for "achievement in fiction on the world stage".

Lydia Davis is an American writer who was born in Massachusetts in 1947 and is now a professor of creative writing at the University at Albany, the capital of New York state.

She is best known for two contrasting accomplishments: translating from the French, Marcel Proust’s complex Du Côté de Chez Swann (Swann’s Way) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and writing short stories.

The Man Booker prize website quotes one of Davis' two-sentence short stories, which runs "I was recently denied a writing prize because they said I was lazy." Not any more says the awarding body - they've called her work inventive and carefully-crafted.

She beat 9 other contenders from around the world. The judges - Professor Sir Christopher Ricks, Elif Batuman, Aminatta Forna, Yiyun Li and Tim Parks - recognised that crafting spare, philosophical and original works, however short, is not for the lazy at all but takes time, skill and effort.

Christopher Ricks, chairman of the judges, said her "writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations."

Previous winners of the prize include Ismail Kadaré, Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro and Philip Roth.