Early Levy comprises two pioneering early works by Man Booker-shortlisted writer Deborah Levy. Beautiful Mutants - Lapinski, a manipulative and magical Russian exile, summons forth a number of highly contemporary urban pilgrims. Through them, Levy explores broken dreams and self-destructive desires in a shimmering, dislocated allegory of its times. & Swallowing Geography - Like her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase.
From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and displaced peoples.
"She storms through the back door, refusing to be weighed down with rationalist and aesthetic baggage...[This] is a world on the brink of destruction but it's going down with a barnyard laugh and an explosive extravagance of imagination". (Blitz). "It throbs its way into the imagination like the unguided missile it decries". (Observer on Beautiful Mutants).
Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of numerous highly praised books including Things I Don't Want to Know and The Unloved, both of which are now published by Penguin. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards (UK Author of the Year) and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.