Things I Don't Want to Know

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.

Deborah Levy is the author of six novels: Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl, Swimming Home and Hot Milk. Both Swimming Home and Hot Milk were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her short story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the International Frank O'Connor short story award and was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as were her acclaimed dramatisations of Freud's iconic case studies, Dora, and The Wolfman. Levy has written for The Royal Shakespeare Company, and her pioneering theatre writing is collected in Levy: Plays 1. Levy was an AHRB Fellow at the Royal College of Art. The first volume of her memoir on writing, gender politics and philosophy is Things I Don't Want to Know.