Things I Don't Want to Know : On Writing

Levy, Deborah

ISBN 10: 1620405652 / ISBN 13: 9781620405659

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2014

Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Seller Inventory # 21355777-6

Synopsis:

<p><b>To be published simultaneously with <i>Black Vodka</i>, the Man Booker Prize–shortlisted writer's new collection of short stories, a shimmering jewel of a book about writing.</b><br><br>Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay “Why I Write.” Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter-political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm-and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective. <br><br>As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK where she played at being a writer in the company of builders and bus drivers in cheap diners; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye.<br><br>Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the author at seven, fifteen, and fifty), <i>Things I Don't Want to Know</i> brings the reader into a writer's heart.</p>

About the Author: <b>Deborah Levy</b> writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and widely broadcast on the BBC, including her dramatizations of two of Freud's most iconic case histories, <i>Dora </i>and <i>The Wolfman</i>. The author of highly praised novels including the Man Booker Prize–shortlisted <i>Swimming Home</i>, <i>Beautiful Mutants</i>, <i>Swallowing Geography</i>, and <i>Billy and Girl</i>, she lives in London.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Things I Don't Want to Know : On Writing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Publication Date: 2014
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good