Levy's elegant language and subtle, uncanny plot are strictly adult fare…Levy creates perfectly realistic scenes that erupt in flashes of disorienting hostility and the non sequiturs of dreams…The seductive pleasure of Levy's prose stems from its layered brilliance.

She has always written across a number of art forms (including collaborations with visual artists) and was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989 to 1991. Levy published a short story collection, Black Vodka, which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award 2012, and in 2016 she released her fourth novel, Hot Milk, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was also shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year prize at the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and for the 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. Swimming Home, her 2011 novel, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Her first novel Beautiful Mutants, came out in 1986 her second, Swallowing Geography, in 1993 and her third, Billy and Girl, in 1996. She also served as director and writer for Manact Theatre Company in Cardiff, Wales. Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts, leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, including Pax, Heresies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and others which are published in Levy: Plays 1 (Methuen). The family emigrated to Wembley Park, in 1968. Levy's father was a member of the African National Congress and an academic and historian. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and she is the author of several novels including, Swimming Home and Hot Milk, both of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. ( From the publisher.)ĭeborah Levy, born in South Africa, is is a British playwright, novelist, and poet. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?Ī subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool.

Swimming home by deborah levy