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  • Published: 5 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241983638
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $18.99

Things I Don't Want to Know

Living Autobiography 1




First instalment of Levy's essential 'living autobiography' trilogy - reissued to match the beautiful COST OF LIVING hardback

Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory and shape it to her need. It is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers.

This first volume of the trilogy focuses on the writer as a young woman - the confusion and turbulence of youth, and the uncertainties of carving an identity as a writer. The second volume, The Cost of Living, speaks to the challenges of middle age as a writer and a woman - motherhood, separation, bereavement.

  • Published: 5 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241983638
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $18.99

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 Things I Don't Want to Know

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

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

Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression

Jeanette Winterson

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

Sunday Times

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

New Statesman

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

Independent