Things I Don't Want to Know
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A luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, a witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write"
Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part "living autobiography" on writing and womanhood.
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 as a young woman and shape it to her need. Things I Don't Want to Know is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers.
About this Author
DEBORAH LEVY writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. She is the author of several highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (long-listed for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl; the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka; and a three-part autobiography, Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. She lives in London and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Reviews
"[A] contemplation of what it means to be a contemporary woman...Levy's books are slim, but no less wondrous; she packs astounding insight and clarity into every passage." --The Globe and Mail
"A lively, vivid account of how the most innocent details of a writer's personal story can gain power in fiction." --The New York Times Book Review
"Profound." --Los Angeles Times
"[Levy] is a skilled wordsmith and creates an array of intense emotions and moods in precise, controlled prose." - The Independent (UK)
"A vivid, striking account of a writer's life." --The Spectator (UK)
"Powerful." --New Statesman (UK)
"An up-to-date version of 'A Room of One's Own', and, like the Virginia Woolf essay, I suspect it will be quoted for many years to come." --Irish Examiner
"Levy successfully weaves historical, political, and personal threads together to form a nuanced account of her life and why she writes. Her graceful memoir/essay emphasizes a woman's need to speak out even if she has to use a quiet voice. For feminists and memoir enthusiasts." --Library Journal
"Rather than, say, telling the reader to show rather than tell, [Levy] declines to tell us anything and then shows us a great deal. What results is much more valuable than any literal writing guide or any literal response to Orwell would have been. It certainly has greater political import." --Biographile
"Few essayists have the courage and talent to go head-to-head with George Orwell. Deborah Levy's response to Orwell's iconic piece "Why I Write" is at once a feminist call to arms, a touching memoir of small moments, and a guide to writing fiction from one of literature's bravest rulebreakers." --Barnes & Noble Review
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