The Man Who Saw Everything

Author(s): Deborah Levy

Location(s): London, Berlin

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1988 & 2016

Location

Content

In 1989, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Road crossing. He is fine; he gets up and goes to see his girlfriend, Jennifer. They have sex and then break up. He leaves for the GDR, where he will have more sex (with several members of the same family), harvest mushrooms in the rain, bury his dead father in a matchbox, and get on the wrong side of the Stasi.

In 2016, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Rd crossing. He is not fine at all; he is rushed to hospital and spends the following days in and out of consciousness, in and out of history. Jennifer is sitting by his bedside. His very-much-not-dead father is sitting by his bedside. Someone important is missing.

Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail of breadcrumbs that may or may not show you the way home, Deborah Levy presents an ambitious, playful and totally electrifying novel. 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.

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