Things I Don't Want to Know: A Response to George Orwell's Why I Write - Hardcover

Deborah Levy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1907903631 ISBN 13: 9781907903632

Publisher: Notting Hill Editions, 2013

Synopsis

Things I Don't Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell's essay, but also to Levy's own, essential oeuvre.

Deborah Levy writes: 'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.'

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts, leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination". She wrote and published her first novel Beautiful Mutants, when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. Her recent novel, Swimming Home, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Levy has just published Black Vodka: Ten Stories with And Other Stories.

From the Back Cover

'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.' Deborah Levy

Edition details

• Publisher: Notting Hill Editions
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907903631
• ISBN 13: 9781907903632
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 116