The Man Who Saw Everything: Deborah Levy - Hardcover

Levy, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241268028 ISBN 13: 9780241268025

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2019

Synopsis

One of the most exciting books of the year - this new masterpiece from Deborah Levy is the perfect gift

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

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Levy is the author of seven novels: Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl, Swimming Home, Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Man Booker Prize. Her short story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award and was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as were her acclaimed dramatizations of Freud's iconic case studies, Dora and The Wolfman. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and her pioneering theatre writing is collected in Levy: Plays 1. Her work is widely translated.

Deborah Levy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also the author of a formally innovative and emotionally daring trilogy of memoirs, a living autobiography on writing, gender politics and philosophy. The first two volumes, Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, won the Prix Femina Etranger 2020. The final volume, Real Estate, will be published in Spring 2021.

From the Back Cover

In 1989 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.

In 2016, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is rushed to hospital, where he spends the following days slipping in and out of consciousness, and in and out of memories of the past. A number of people gather at his bedside. One of them is Jennifer Moreau. But someone important is missing.

Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying new novel examines what we see and what we fail to see, until we encounter the spectres of history - both the world's and our own.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0241268028
• ISBN 13: 9780241268025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208