[5][6] Davids won the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "Bridling", which was described by the chair of judges as a "triumph of language, storytelling and risk-taking".
[4] On 17 September 2024, Davids was announced as the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "Bridling", originally published in the Georgia Review in 2023.
[18][19] Chika Unigwe, the chair of the judging panel – which also included Julianknxx, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, Tumi Molekane (aka Stogie T), and Ayesha Harruna Attah – described the story as "an impressive achievement, a triumph of language, storytelling and risk-taking while maintaining a tightly controlled narrative about women who rebel.
[7] Davids' work is disseminated through a variety of forms – journal articles, live performances, published play texts, film documentaries, a novel – to a range of audiences (commercial, academic/educational).
They are understood within these contexts as opening up unexpected spaces in which the lives of South African — specifically Muslim Capetonian — women, assume the central focus.
[22] Davids' first novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was published in April 2014 by Random House Struik-Umuzi,[23] and in December 2014 was announced as one of three books shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
[27] At the end of 2014, she began writing her play What Remains – about slavery at the Cape, "and the haunted city, about ghosts and property developers, about archives and madness, about history, memory and magic, about paintings, protests and the now"[28] – which was staged at the Main Festival at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2017, directed by Jay Pather, and featuring Denise Newman, Faniswa Yisa, Shaun Oelf and Buhle Ngaba.
What Remains was hailed as a "beautiful masterpiece" in the Cape Times; it was later nominated for seven Fleur du Cap Theatre awards and won five, including Best New South African Play, Best Director, Best Ensemble, Best Actress and Best Lighting Design.
[31] In 2022, the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town staged her most recent play, Hold Still, "a challenging take on issues of migrancy, as seen through the eyes of a family still haunted by the ghosts of the past".