Swimming Home A Novel

Short-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. With an Introduction by Tom McCarthy, author of C. As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain? A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Homereveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast on the BBC. She is the author of highly praised novels including Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, and Billy and Girl. She lives in London.

“Swimming Home reminded me of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Although a short work, it has an epic quality. This is a prizewinner.” - The Independent
One of the finest new novels I have read (and already reread) in a long time...it radiates the sensual languor of sun-drenched afternoons in the south of France and the disquieting, uncanny beauty only perceived by a true daytime insomniac. - The Guardian
“As sharp as a wasp sting and as deep as the 'cloudy' pool by the French holiday villa where the story unfolds.” - Sunday Times “A statement on the power of the unsaid….Levy’s cinematic clarity and momentum… convey confusion with remarkable lucidity.”—Times Literary Supplement “One of the finest new novels I have read (and already reread) in a long time...it  radiates the sensual languor of sun-drenched afternoons in the south of France and the disquieting, uncanny beauty only perceived by a true daytime insomniac.”—The Guardian