Book review - Real Estate
Deborah Levy may have found literary success relatively late in life, but she is making up for it now. In her three-part “living autobiography”, she describes her determination, from an early age, to become a successful writer and her lifelong yearning to be widely read and translated. After Levy’s 2011 novel, Swimming Home (published by indie press And Other Stories), was nominated for the Man Booker Prize – her dreams looked closer to becoming reality. This was followed by a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013) and two further novels Hot Milk (2016) and The Man Who Saw Everything (2019), also nominated for the Man Booker. In 2013, Levy published the first part of what was to become her living autobiography in response to George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I Write’. In Things I Don’t Want to Know (Notting Hill Editions) Levy examined writing from a feminist perspective and reflected on her difficult childhood in South Africa. Her father was imprisoned for membership of the