[]
Things I Don't Want to Know
Play sample
  • Published: 6 February 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241146576
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 96

Things I Don't Want to Know

Living Autobiography 1

Formats & editions
Paperback
16 Apr 2018
EBook
6 Feb 2014
Audiobook
5 Apr 2018
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

A sparklingly written and brilliantly insightful longform essay from the author of the acclaimed Swimming Home

'Things I Don't Want to Know' is a 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 both to Orwell's essay and to Levy's own oeuvre.

'In her powerful rejoinder to Orwell, Deborah Levy responds to his proposed motives for writing -- 'sheer egoism', 'aesthetic enthusiasm', 'historical impulse' and 'political purpose' -- with illuminating moments of autobiography. A vivid, striking account of a writer's life, which feminises and personalises Orwell's blunt assertions' Spectator
  • Published: 6 February 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241146576
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 96
Categories:

About the author

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy is the author of several novels including August Blue, Hot Milk and Swimming Home, alongside a formally innovative, critically acclaimed 'living autobiography' trilogy: Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and Booker Prize and won the Prix Femina Etranger. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

DL

Also by Deborah Levy

Real Estate
August Blue
Hot Milk
The Position of Spoons
The Man Who Saw Everything
The Cost of Living
Swimming Home
See all

Praise for Things I Don't Want to Know

A writer whose anger and confusion in the face of the world transform into poetic flights of fancy . . . which always feel marvellously right

Independent

An exciting writer, sharp and shocking as the knives her characters wield

Sunday Times

An up-to-date version of 'A Room of One's Own' . . . I suspect it will be quoted for many years to come

Irish Examiner

Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression

Jeanette Winterson

One of the few contemporary British writers comfortable on a world stage

New Statesman

Superb sharpness and originality of imagination. It is feminist and political while being an inspiring work of writing . . . She writes on the high wire, unfalteringly

Marina Warner