Deborah Levy (born 6 August 1959) is a South African novelist, playwright and poet. She initially concentrated on writing for the theatre – her plays were staged by the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...

– before focusing on prose fiction. Her early novels included ''Beautiful Mutants'', ''Swallowing Geography,'' and ''Billy & Girl''. Her more recent fiction has included the Booker-shortlisted novels '' Swimming Home'' and '' Hot Milk'', as well as the Booker-longlisted ''The Man Who Saw Everything,'' and the short-story collection ''Black Vodka''.

Early life and education

Levy was born in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

, South Africa, the granddaughter of working-class

Lithuanian Jewish {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Litvaks , image = , caption = , poptime = , region1 = {{flag, Lithuania , pop1 = 2,800 , region2 = {{flag, South Africa , pop2 = 6 ...

immigrants on her father's side, and an upper-middle-class "English colonial" family, as she described it, on her mother's side. Her father, Norman Levy, was a member of the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

and an academic and historian. Her mother was Philippa (née Murrell). Her father was placed under a

banning order This is a selection of people subject to a "banning order" by the apartheid-era South African government. Banning was a repressive and extrajudicial measure used by the South African apartheid regime (1948–1994) against its political opponent ...

by the

Apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

government from 1964 until the family fled to London in 1968, initially living in

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in the London Borou ...

before moving to

Petts Wood Petts Wood is a town in south-east London, England, previously located in the historic county of Kent. It lies south of Chislehurst, west of St Paul's Cray and Poverest, north of Orpington and Crofton, and east of Southborough and Bromley ...

. Her parents divorced in 1974. She was educated at St Saviour's and St Olave's School, Southwark, and then at Hampstead School. She then trained at

Dartington College of Arts Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts college located at Dartington Hall in the south-west of England, offering courses at degree and postgraduate level together with an arts research programme. It existed for a period of almost 50 ...

, which she was inspired to attend by

Derek Jarman Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, and gay rights activist. Biography Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing ...

, whom she met while working as an usher at Notting Hill's Gate Cinema.

Work

Theatre

After leaving Dartington in 1981, Levy wrote a number of plays, including ''Pax'', ''Heresies'' for the

, and others (''Clam'', ''The B File'', ''Pushing the Prince into Denmark'', ''Macbeth – False Memories'', and ''Honey, Baby''), which are published in ''Levy: Plays 1'' (Methuen). She was director and writer for Man Act Theatre Company, a radical group that operated under the umbrella of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, based at

Chapter Arts Centre Chapter Arts Centre (often just referred to as Chapter) is an arts centre in Canton, Cardiff, Canton, Cardiff, Wales, opened in 1971. Description Chapter hosts films, Play (theatre), plays, performance art and live music, and includes a free ar ...

Poetry

Levy's major work as a poet is ''An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell'' (1990), which takes the form of a conversation between an angel and an accountant. It considers the struggle between, on the one hand, spontaneity and ambition, and, on the other, logic and contentment.

Fiction

Levy published a collection of short stories, ''Ophelia and the Great Idea'', in 1985. Her first novel, ''Beautiful Mutants'', was published in 1987 by

Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a British publishing firm headquartered in London and founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard (1893–1968) set up the publishing house in ...

. Her second novel, ''Swallowing Geography'', was published in 1993, also by Cape, and her third, ''Billy and Girl'', was published in 1996 by

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...

. Her short story "Proletarian Zen" was published in ''PEN New Fiction'' in 1985 by

PEN International PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide professional association, association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association ...

and Quartet Books. '' Swimming Home'' (And Other Stories, 2011) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 among other awards. Levy published a short story collection, ''Black Vodka'' (And Other Stories, 2013), which cemented her reputation as "one of the most exciting voices in contemporary British fiction." Her novel '' Hot Milk'' was published in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016."The 2016 Shortlist"
The Man Booker Prize. In 2019 her novel ''The Man Who Saw Everything'' was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Autobiographies

Levy's first volume of autobiography, ''Things I Don't Want to Know'', was written in response to

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

's essay "

Why I Write "Why I Write" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell detailing his personal journey to becoming a writer. It was first published in the Summer 1946 edition of '' Gangrel''. The editors of this magazine, J.B.Pick and Charles Neil, had asked a selectio ...

" and was published in 2013. In 2018, she published a second volume, ''The Cost of Living''. She has described them as "living" autobiographies, since they are "hopefully not being written at the end, with hindsight, but in the storm of life". The final volume, ''Real Estate'', was published in May 2021.

Style and themes

Writing in the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...

'' in 2016, Alice Spawls commented on several unconventional characteristics of Levy's writing: she "doesn't like stable narrators", has a "preference for shifting perspectives – she especially likes looking at one character through another", and "is interested in women who don’t have homes and aren't sure where to look for them" ("women who like to dissect things, who reassure themselves with cataloguing and calculating, as though people and feelings could be contained by indices"). Spawls noted that Levy's stories "almost always begin with a failure of language", explaining that Levy "has said that she's not interested in the most articulate person in the room, and that her work is informed by the theatre director Zofia Kalinska’s statement: 'We always hesitate when we wish for something. In my theatre, I like to show the hesitation and not to conceal it. A hesitation is not the same as a pause. It is an attempt to defeat the wish. Leo Robson, reviewing ''The Man Who Saw Everything'' in the ''

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

'', provided this overview: "Levy’s project as a writer is itself about effacing borders – between the novel of ideas and the novel of sentiment, between the schematic and the fluent, the inevitable and the accidental, the cerebral and immersive, the sensuous (or somatic) and cerebral, the parochial and otherworldly, metaphor and literalism. If this sounds vague, it should." In her review of Levy's 2013 story collection ''Black Vodka'', Lauren Elkin emphasized the philosophical qualities of Levy's work, writing that "Levy makes an aesthetic and ethics of 'elsewhereness'--being apart is another way of being together--and she explores the bonds we choose to create or break, and the ones we can't decide about. ..Levy sensitively conveys the phenomenology of textures, of skin and breath. Embedded in her coiled, polished sentences is the drive that pushes us together, and forces us apart."

Academic

Levy was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, from 1989 to 1991. From 2006 to 2009, she was an AHRB Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

. She was a visiting professor at Falmouth School of Art,

Falmouth University Falmouth University is a specialist public university for the creative industries based in Falmouth, Cornwall, Falmouth and Penryn, Cornwall, Penryn, Cornwall, England. Founded as Falmouth School of Art in 1902, it was later known as Falmouth C ...

, from 2013 to 2015, and from 2018 to 2019 was a fellow of

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

's Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Adaptations

One of Levy's short stories, "Stardust Nation", was adapted as a

graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...

by Andrzej Klimowski, emeritus professor at the

, and published by SelfMadeHero in 2016. A film adaptation of '' Swimming Home'' directed by Justin Anderson debuted at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz Rebecca Lenkiewicz (born 1968) is a British playwright, screenwriter, film director, and former actress. She is best known as the author of '' Her Naked Skin'' (2008), which was the first original play written by a living female playwright to be ...

directed a film adaptation of '' Hot Milk'', which premiered at the

75th Berlin International Film Festival The 75th annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale, took place between 13 and 23 February 2025 in Berlin, Germany. American filmmaker Todd Haynes was named the Jury President for the main competition. It marked the f ...

in 2025.

Personal life

Levy married David Gale, a playwright, in 1997. The couple, who have two daughters, are now divorced.

Awards and honours

*2001: Lannan Literary Fellowship, and 2004 Residency, Marfa *2012:

Specsavers National Book Awards The British Book Awards or Nibbies are literary awards for the best UK writers and their works, administered by ''The Bookseller''. The awards have had several previous names, owners and sponsors since being launched in 1990, including the Na ...

, UK Author of the Year prize shortlist for ''Swimming Home'' *2012:

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

shortlist for ''Swimming Home'' *2012: BBC International Short Story Award shortlist for "Black Vodka" *2013: Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize shortlist for ''Swimming Home'' *2013:

Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award __NOTOC__ The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award—named in honour of Frank O'Connor, who devoted much of his work to the form—was an international literary award presented for the best short story collection. It was presented betwe ...

shortlist for ''Black Vodka'' *2016:

shortlist for ''Hot Milk'' *2017:

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the ...

*2019:

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

longlist for ''The Man Who Saw Everything'' *2020:

Prix Femina étranger The Prix Femina étranger is a French literary award established in 1985. It is awarded annually to a foreign-language literary work translated into French. List of laureates See also * Prix Femina * Prix Femina essai References

{{DE ...

for ''Things I Don't Want to Know'' and ''The Cost of Living'', translated into French by Céline Leroy. * ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' ranked ''The Cost of Living'' number 84 in its list of "The 100 best books of the 21st century".

Bibliography

References

External links

"An Interview with Deborah Levy"
, ''BookSlut'', May 2004

, doollee {{DEFAULTSORT:Levy, Deborah Living people 1959 births 20th-century British dramatists and playwrights 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British women writers 21st-century British dramatists and playwrights 21st-century British novelists 21st-century British women writers Academics of Falmouth University Alumni of Dartington College of Arts British people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent British women dramatists and playwrights British women novelists Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Columbia University fellows Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Writers from Johannesburg People from Petts Wood Prix Femina Étranger winners South African people of English descent South African people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent British weird fiction writers Writers from the London Borough of Bromley People from Wembley Writers from the London Borough of Brent