SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012. Swimming Home is a subversive page-turner, a merciless gaze at the insidious harm that depression can have on apparently stable, well-turned-out people. Set in a summer villa, the story is tautly structured, taking place over a single week in which a group of beautiful, flawed tourists in the French Riviera come loose at the seams.  Deborah Levy's writing combines linguistic virtuosity, technical brilliance and a strong sense of what it means to be alive. Swimming Home represents a new direction for a major writer. In this book, the wildness and the danger are all the more powerful for resting just beneath the surface. With its deep psychology, biting humour and deceptively light surface, it wears its darkness lightly.

By:   Deborah Levy
Introduction by:   Tom McCarthy
Imprint:   And Other Stories
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 18mm,  Width: 210mm,  Spine: 140mm
Weight:   249g
ISBN:  

9781908276025

ISBN 10:   1908276029
Publication Date:   September 2011
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock at Abbey's Bookshop
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Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography (both Jonathan Cape) and Billy and Girl (Bloomsbury).

'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression.' Jeanette Winterson; 'I made notes to read as much as I can find by Deborah Levy - ' Bookslut.com; 'She is one of the few contemporary British writers comfortable on a world stage.' New Statesman; 'the strange brilliance of her imagination' The Independent; 'Levy is an exciting writer, sharp and shocking as the knives her characters wield.' Sunday Times

'Deborah Levy's storytelling is allusive, elliptical and disturbing. Her touch is gentle, often funny and always acute - This is a prizewinner.' Julia Pascal, The Independent 'Swimming Home is a statement on the power of the unsaid. Magisterial - Themes, phrases and images recur in rhythmic cycles through this fugal novel. Levy's cinematic clarity and momentum convey confusion with remarkable lucidity.' Abigail Deutsch, TLS 'Deborah Levy has made something strange and new - spiky and unsettling. In Swimming Home, home is elusive, safety is unlikely, and the reader closes the book both satisfied and unnerved.' John Self, The Guardian 'Swimming Home is as sharp as a wasp sting.' Christina Petrie, Sunday Times 'A compact treasure.' Boyd Tonkin, in his round-up of the year's best fiction, The Independent 'Dark, sometimes humorous, intriguing and tragic, Levy's tale held me captive from its dramatic beginning' Lucy Popescu, The Tablet 'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression.' Jeanette Winterson; 'I made notes to read as much as I can find by Deborah Levy - ' Bookslut.com; 'She is one of the few contemporary British writers comfortable on a world stage.' New Statesman; 'the strange brilliance of her imagination' The Independent; 'Levy is an exciting writer, sharp and shocking as the knives her characters wield.' Sunday Times

• Long-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2012.
• Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2012.