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  • Published: 9 May 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241421314
  • Imprint: Hamish Hamilton
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00

August Blue




The mesmerising new novel from the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

'If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.'

Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live?

Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.

A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.

  • Published: 9 May 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241421314
  • Imprint: Hamish Hamilton
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of numerous books, including the essay 'Things I Don't Want to Know'and the early novels Swallowing Geography and Beautiful Mutants. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Also by Deborah Levy

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Praise for August Blue

August Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of reality

iNews

August Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of reality

iNews

August Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of reality

iNews

A gleeful read . . . [Deborah Levy's] prose is as quick and bare as ever, her manner excitingly abrupt . . . You know you'll read August Blue again

M John Harrison, Guardian

A gleeful read . . . [Deborah Levy's] prose is as quick and bare as ever, her manner excitingly abrupt . . . You know you'll read August Blue again

M John Harrison, Guardian

A gleeful read . . . [Deborah Levy's] prose is as quick and bare as ever, her manner excitingly abrupt . . . You know you'll read August Blue again

M John Harrison, Guardian

Intelligent and absurd, precise and dream-like . . . I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she does

The Scotsman

Intelligent and absurd, precise and dream-like . . . I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she does

The Scotsman

Intelligent and absurd, precise and dream-like . . . I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she does

The Scotsman

Playful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy . . . Nobody does enigmatic like Levy

Mail on Sunday

Playful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy . . . Nobody does enigmatic like Levy

Mail on Sunday

Playful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy . . . Nobody does enigmatic like Levy

Mail on Sunday

Levy's lyrical, pitch-perfect prose, where every word is weighted with significance, is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and love

Independent

Levy's lyrical, pitch-perfect prose, where every word is weighted with significance, is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and love

Independent

Levy's lyrical, pitch-perfect prose, where every word is weighted with significance, is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and love

Independent

August Blue is Levy's eighth novel, and since her 20s, she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience, like cinema and dance . . . Levy's writing is psychologically complex

Simran Hans, New York Times

August Blue is Levy's eighth novel, and since her 20s, she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience, like cinema and dance . . . Levy's writing is psychologically complex

Simran Hans, New York Times

August Blue is Levy's eighth novel, and since her 20s, she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience, like cinema and dance . . . Levy's writing is psychologically complex

Simran Hans, New York Times

[Levy] can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifs

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times

[Levy] can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifs

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times

[Levy] can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifs

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times

[An] enigmatic novel . . . Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music . . . mesmerising . . . enigmatic . . . refreshingly original

Amber Medland, Daily Telegraph

[An] enigmatic novel . . . Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music . . . mesmerising . . . enigmatic . . . refreshingly original

Amber Medland, Daily Telegraph

[An] enigmatic novel . . . Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music . . . mesmerising . . . enigmatic . . . refreshingly original

Amber Medland, Daily Telegraph

Deborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

Charlotte Higgins, Guardian

Deborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

Charlotte Higgins, Guardian

Deborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

Charlotte Higgins, Guardian

[A] wistful, fabular new novel . . . Since the 1990s, Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy, episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives, crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges, circling around questions of gender and power, inheritance, autonomy and lack . . . The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality, running forward in spurts, pausing, repeating key phrases

Olivia Laing, Observer

[A] wistful, fabular new novel . . . Since the 1990s, Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy, episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives, crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges, circling around questions of gender and power, inheritance, autonomy and lack . . . The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality, running forward in spurts, pausing, repeating key phrases

Olivia Laing, Observer

[A] wistful, fabular new novel . . . Since the 1990s, Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy, episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives, crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges, circling around questions of gender and power, inheritance, autonomy and lack . . . The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality, running forward in spurts, pausing, repeating key phrases

Olivia Laing, Observer

Levy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness, with dreamlike, vertiginous scenes

Lara Pawson, Times Literary Supplement

Levy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness, with dreamlike, vertiginous scenes

Lara Pawson, Times Literary Supplement

Levy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness, with dreamlike, vertiginous scenes

Lara Pawson, Times Literary Supplement

Levy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood, mother love and meaning

Guardian, '2023 Summer Reads'

Levy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood, mother love and meaning

Guardian, '2023 Summer Reads'

Levy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood, mother love and meaning

Guardian, '2023 Summer Reads'

Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . a lyrical, surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images

Leila Slimani

Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . a lyrical, surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images

Leila Slimani

Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . a lyrical, surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images

Leila Slimani

A meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual, enigmatic and strangely addictive

Financial Times 'What to Read this Summer'

A meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual, enigmatic and strangely addictive

Financial Times 'What to Read this Summer'

A meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual, enigmatic and strangely addictive

Financial Times 'What to Read this Summer'

This is a stunner

Publishers Weekly

This is a stunner

Publishers Weekly

This is a stunner

Publishers Weekly

Levy fans will delight in August Blue’s heady exploration of female creativity

Financial Times, 'Best Books of 2023'

Levy fans will delight in August Blue’s heady exploration of female creativity

Financial Times, 'Best Books of 2023'

Levy fans will delight in August Blue’s heady exploration of female creativity

Financial Times, 'Best Books of 2023'