Beautiful Mutants and Swallowing Geography: Two Early Novels

Publisher Marketing: From the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of "Swimming Home," a single volume comprising her first two novels: "Beautiful Mutants," long out of print, and "Swallowing Geography," never before published in the United States. "Beautiful Mutants," Deborah Levy's surreal first novel, introduces a manipulative and magical Russian exile who summons forth a series of grotesques among them the Poet, the Banker, and the Anorexic Anarchist. Levy explores the anxieties that pervaded the 1980s: exile and emigration, broken dreams, crazed greed, and the first seeds of the global financial crisis, self-destructive desires, and the disintegration of culture. It is a feverish allegory written in prose so beautiful and acrobatic that it could only come from a poet. This remarkable and pioneering debut is as much about language as it is the world that ensnares and alienates us. In "Swallowing Geography," J. K., like her namesake Jack Kerouac, is always on the road, traveling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. She wanders, meeting friends and strangers, battling her raging mother, and taking in the world through her uniquely irreverent, ironic perspective. Levy blends fairy tale with biting satire, pushing at the edges of reality and marveling at where the world collapses in on itself. In this stunningly original novel, Deborah Levy searches deep into the heart of the late 20th century and does not hold back on what she finds there." Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 04/06/2015 (EAN 9781620406755, Paperback) Library Journal 05/01/2015 pg. 63 (EAN 9781620406755, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Levy, Deborah Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts before becoming a playwright. Her plays include "Pax, Heresies, Clam, Call Blue Jane, Shiny Nylon, Honey Baby Middle England, Pushing the Prince into Denmark" and "Macbeth-False Memories". She has also written some novels and was a Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991. Contributor Bio:  Van Dyck, Jennifer Jennifer Van Dyck has starred on and off Broadway, in such films as The Contender and Bullets Over Broadway, and on television in Law & Order and Spin City. Contributor Bio:  Wilds, Heather Heather Wilds has appeared in numerous plays on the London stage to great critical acclaim. She has also performed in award-winning films, appeared on TV and in commercials, and works as an audiobook narrator and voice actress.