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The stories in Black Vodka, by acclaimed author Deborah Levy, are perfectly formed worlds unto themselves, written in elegant yet economical prose. She is a master of the short story, exploring loneliness and belonging; violence and tenderness; the ephemeral and the solid; the grotesque and the beautiful; love and infidelity; and fluid identities national, cultural, and personal.
In "Shining a Light," a woman's lost luggage is juxtaposed with far more serious losses. An icy woman seduces a broken man in "Vienna," and a man's empathy threatens to destroy him in "Stardust Nation." "Cave Girl" features a girl who wants to be a different kind of woman - she succeeds in a shocking way. A deformed man seeks beauty amid his angst in the title story.
These are twenty-first century lives dissected with razor-sharp humor and curiosity. Published simultaneously with Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing, Levy's stories will send you tumbling into a rabbit hole, and you won't be able to scramble out until long after you've turned the last page.
"Starred Review. Levy provides fragmentary glimpses into the fascinating lives of people at odds with their surroundings and profoundly disturbed by their previous experiences. Edgy, unsettling, and intoxicating." - Library Journal
"[Levy's] precision and unusual imagination are well suited to the short story form... Levy's talent is evident throughout - though the stories themselves can be unsettling, their evocative language invites the reader to settle in." - Publishers Weekly
"One of the most exciting voices in contemporary British fiction...sophisticated and astringent." - The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"These ominous, odd, erotic stories burrow deep into your brain." - Financial Times (UK)
"A sexy hauteur in Deborah Levy's prose [is] reminiscent of the voice of Marianne Faithfull. The rasping, deadpan delivery of these ten new stories emit a dreamy harshness at once jaded and invigorating." - New Statesman
"Fabulously jolting... Accomplished and uncanny... Powerful." - The Guardian (UK)
"Levy's sparse, elegant stories are poetic and faintly surreal." - The Sunday Times
"Deborah Levy showed she is a top-hitting novelist with a Man Booker Prize shortlist place for Swimming Home. Can she conquer the genre which demands she fashion perfect jewels? ... Yes, Levy can do macro - and microcosm. These tales of unconventional love reinforce her reputation as a major contemporary writer who never pulls her punches." - The Independent (UK)
This information about Black Vodka was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. The author of highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (longlisted 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 two parts of her working autobiography, Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, she lives in London. Levy is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Name Pronunciation
Deborah Levy: leave-ee
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