About the Author

Deborah Levy, a playwright, novelist and poet, was born in 1959 in South Africa. She moved to Britain with her family and studied theatre at Dartington College of Arts. She was a Creative Arts Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1989 and 1991. She is a regular contributor of articles and reviews to newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Guardian and the New Statesman.

She is also the author of a collection of short stories, entitled Ophelia and the Great Idea (1989), and several novels, the most recent of which, Billy and Girl, was published in 1996. An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell, a collection of poems, was published in 1990, and she wrote the screenplay for a short film Suburban Psycho, televised by the BBC in 1998. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places (2004).

Praise

"Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression."—Jeanette Winterson

"Delicate, calm, mysterious, both playful and terribly sad."—Mary Gaitskill, New York Times

"Levy is the genuine article."—Harvey Pekar, Austin Chronicle

"Deborah Levy is a cunning parodist, and also something more than that. These are intricately knotted stories, each with some strange seed at its core."—Madison Smartt Bell

Book Description

From the author of Billy and Girl, this collection of stories explores the emptiness at the center of the characters' lives and their attempts to fill this lack. In "Cave Girl" Cass goes through a sex change, not to become a man, but rather to become "less of a real girl and more of a pretend woman." Her surgery transforms her into a woman desired by all men—including her brother.

"Conversations with Famous Artists I Have Known" relates an afternoon discussion between two women, one who chose motherhood and a routine life at the expense of her creativity, the other a world famous, self-centered artist.

In these stories about friendship, motherhood, and the search for enduring love, rules about decency and kindness are broken and repaired as men and women attempt to achieve an elusive sense of fulfillment.