Things I Don't Want to Know
On Writing
Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Women&, Biography & Memoir
| Author: | Deborah Levy | ISBN: | 9781620405673 |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing | Publication: | June 10, 2014 |
| Imprint: | Bloomsbury USA | Language: | English |
| Author: | Deborah Levy |
| ISBN: | 9781620405673 |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication: | June 10, 2014 |
| Imprint: | Bloomsbury USA |
| Language: | English |
A shimmering jewel of a book about writing from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, to publish alongside her new work of nonfiction, The Cost of Living.
Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter--political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm--and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective.
As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK where she played at being a writer in the company of builders and bus drivers in cheap diners; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye.
Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the writer at seven, fifteen, and fifty), Things I Don't Want to Know brings the reader into a writer's heart.
A shimmering jewel of a book about writing from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, to publish alongside her new work of nonfiction, The Cost of Living.
Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter--political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm--and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective.
As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK where she played at being a writer in the company of builders and bus drivers in cheap diners; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye.
Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the writer at seven, fifteen, and fifty), Things I Don't Want to Know brings the reader into a writer's heart.
