Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing

Deborah Levy

Nov 2021 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Henrietta Meire

About this audiobook

A shimmering jewel of a book about writing from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter-political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm-and Levy's work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective. As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye. Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the writer at seven, fifteen, and fifty), Things I Don't Want to Know brings the listener into a writer's heart.

About the author

Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts before becoming a playwright. Her plays include Pax, Heresies, Clam, Call Blue Jane, Shiny Nylon, and Pushing the Prince into Denmark. She has also written several novels and was a Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1989-1991.

Henrietta Meire is a full-time voice-over artist and actress. In addition to narrating a plethora of audiobooks, Henrietta has voiced numerous commercial and charity campaigns, as well as video game and animation characters. As an actress, she has appeared on television and in a number of popular films.