'Unmissable . Like chancing upon an oasis, you want to drink it slowly... Subtle, unpredictable, surprising' Guardian Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood. Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need. Things I Don't Want to Know is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers. 'Superb sharpness and originality of imagination. An inspiring work of writing' Marina Warner
From the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home : Dazzling, essential, entirely unlike anything else -- a memoir on modern womanhood, rejecting oppressive social expectations and turning instead towards a thrilling, transformative freedom What does it mean to be free - as an artist, a woman, a mother or daughter? And what is the price of that freedom? In this dazzling memoir, Deborah Levy confronts the essential questions of modern womanhood with humour, pragmatism, and profoundly resonant wisdom. Reflecting on the period when she wrote the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Hot Milk - when her mother was dying, her daughters were leaving home, her marriage was coming to an end - she is characteristically eloquent on the social expectations and surreal realities of daily life. And expanding far beyond these bounds, she describes a uniquely frank, wise and thrilling manifesto for female experience: embracing the exhilarating terror of freedom, seeking to understand what that freedom could mean and how it might feel.
Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A Pandemic. A love story.''br>br>br>From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final instalment in Deborah Levy''s critically acclaimed ''Living Autobiography''br>br>br>''I can''t think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman'' Observer on The Cost of Livingbr>br>br>Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy''s ''Living Autobiography'' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.br>br>br>''I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it - but we must also knock it down.'' br>br>br>''Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy''s every sentence is a masterpiece of clarity and poise... A brilliant writer'' Daily Telegraph on The Cost of Livingbr>br>br>''Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor-sharp insights'' Financial Times on The Cost of Living>
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2019 'An utterly beguiling fever dream of a novel... Its sheer technical bravura places it head and shoulder above pretty much everything else on the [Booker] longlist' Daily Telegraph 'An ice-cold skewering of patriarchy, humanity and the darkness of the 20th century Europe' The Times 'The man who had nearly run me over had touched my hair, as if he were touching a statue or something without a heartbeat...' In 1988 Saul Adler (a narcissistic, young historian) is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is apparently fine; he gets up and goes to see his art student girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They have sex then break up, but not before she has photographed Saul crossing the same Abbey Road. Saul leaves to study in communist East Berlin, two months before the Wall comes down. There he will encounter - significantly - both his assigned translator and his translator's sister, who swears she has seen a jaguar prowling the city. He will fall in love and brood upon his difficult, authoritarian father. And he will befriend a hippy, Rainer, who may or may not be a Stasi agent, but will certainly return to haunt him in middle age. Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying The Man Who Saw Everything examines what we see and what we fail to see, the grave crime of carelessness, the weight of history and our ruinous attempts to shrug it off. 'Levy writes on the high wire, unfalteringly' Marina Warner 'It's clever, raw and doesn't play by any rules' Evening Standard 'Intelligent and supple...a dizzying tale of life across time and borders' Finanical Times
Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A Pandemic. A love story.''br>From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final instalment in Deborah Levy''s critically acclaimed ''Living Autobiography''br>''I can''t think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman'' Observer on The Cost of Livingbr>Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy''s ''Living Autobiography'' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.br>''I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it - but we must also knock it down.'' br>''Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy''s every sentence is a masterpiece of clarity and poise... A brilliant writer'' Daily Telegraph on The Cost of Livingbr>''Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor-sharp insights'' Financial Times on The Cost of Living>
Like her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and displaced peoples.
'If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.' Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live?
Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.
A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.
