TT Journal, Vol.1, ISSUE 2, 19th March 2021

by Deborah Levy

My dear friend

Loved beyond measure

So crazed for life and by life

Always believe in tomorrow

Be sure to make plans for Friday

And don’t forget this weekend

We are making elderflower champagne

With blooms that have just burst open

Deborah Levy is a British novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet, whose proficiency across multiple literary forms marks her out as one of the great contemporary literary figures. Levy’s literary career began in the 1980s, writing plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the MANACT theatre company in Cardiff. Her collected scripts were republished in 2000. Levy’s first novel, Beautiful Mutants, appeared to great acclaim in 1989 and a volume of short stories followed later in the same year, but mainstream success came in 2012 when Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a feat she repeated four years later with Hot Milk. In between came the lauded short story collection Black Vodka and the first part of her ‘living autobiography’ Things I Don’t Want to Know, the second volume of which, The Cost of Living, followed in 2018. Her latest novel, The Man Who Saw Everything, was published in 2019.