Name: The Man Who Saw Everything
Rating: 3.7 (25 reviews)
ISBN: 9781632869845

Deborah Levy

An electrifying novel about beauty, envy, and carelessness from Deborah Levy, author of the Booker Prize finalists Hot Milk and Swimming Home.

The Man Who Saw Everything

ame 

Cassie B

Christian von Schack

Georgie K

Meryn Kae Addison

Reiko Fu

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2019 'An ice-cold skewering of patriarchy, humanity and the darkness of the 20th century Europe' The Times 'It's like this, Saul Adler.' 'No, it's like this, Jennifer Moreau.' In 1988, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. Apparently fine, he gets up and poses for a photograph taken by his girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. He carries this photo with him to East Berlin: a fragment of the present, an anchor to the West. But in the GDR he finds himself troubled by time - stalked by the spectres of history, slipping in and out of a future that does not yet exist. Until, in 2016, Saul attempts to cross the Abbey Road again... 'A time-bending, location-hopping tale of love, truth and the power of seeing. Thoroughly gripping' Sunday Telegraph 'Writing so beautiful it stops the reader on the page' Independent 'Levy splices time in artfully believable, mesmerizing strokes' Lambda Literary 'Skewering totalitarianism - from the state, to the family, to the strictures of the male gaze - Levy explodes conventional narrative to explore the individual's place and culpability within history' Guardian 'An utterly beguiling fever dream' Daily Telegraph

Sara Holman

Liz Prinz

Jas Wang

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2019 'An utterly beguiling fever dream of a novel... Its sheer technical bravura places it head and shoulder above pretty much everything else on the [Booker] longlist' Daily Telegraph 'An ice-cold skewering of patriarchy, humanity and the darkness of the 20th century Europe' The Times 'The man who had nearly run me over had touched my hair, as if he were touching a statue or something without a heartbeat...' In 1988 Saul Adler (a narcissistic, young historian) is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is apparently fine; he gets up and goes to see his art student girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They have sex then break up, but not before she has photographed Saul crossing the same Abbey Road. Saul leaves to study in communist East Berlin, two months before the Wall comes down. There he will encounter - significantly - both his assigned translator and his translator's sister, who swears she has seen a jaguar prowling the city. He will fall in love and brood upon his difficult, authoritarian father. And he will befriend a hippy, Rainer, who may or may not be a Stasi agent, but will certainly return to haunt him in middle age. Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying The Man Who Saw Everything examines what we see and what we fail to see, the grave crime of carelessness, the weight of history and our ruinous attempts to shrug it off. 'Levy writes on the high wire, unfalteringly' Marina Warner 'It's clever, raw and doesn't play by any rules' Evening Standard 'Intelligent and supple...a dizzying tale of life across time and borders' Finanical Times

The Man Who Saw Everything

Reviews

Highlights