Things I Don't Want to Know
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  • 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
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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
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About the author

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy was born in 1969, studied theatre at Dartington College of Arts, and now lives in London. Her plays include Pax, which City Limits considred 'remarkable for its combination of intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination' and Heresies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, 'An ambitious, imaginative, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, passage across a terrain where moral parables and folk fancies meet' (Marina Warner, Independent). She has also published a collection of short stories, Ophelia and the Great Idea, and a novel, Beautiful Mutants, and, most recently, Swallowing Geography, all of which are published by Vintage.

Also by Deborah Levy

Real Estate
August Blue
The Position of Spoons
The Cost of Living
The Man Who Saw Everything
Hot Milk
Swallowing Geography
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