The author presents a collection of stories that explores human connections, perceptions, and loyalty through such tales as "Shining a Light," "Stardust Nation," and "Cave Girl."

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize "Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain? A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.

This collection explores the emptiness at the center of the characters' lives and their attempts to fill this lack. 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.

The image is instant. It whirs out of the camera and they all watch it develop in silence. "Here." He gives the photograph to the perfect flawless woman without looking at it, by way of apology. When everyone gathers around Luciana to admire it, Gustav clicks again. The unloved look brave. The unloved look heavier than the loved. Their eyes are sadder but their thoughts are clearer. They are not concerned with pleasing or affirming their loved one's point of view. The unloved look preoccupied. The unloved look impatient. A group of hedonistic tourists--from Algeria, England, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, and America--gathers to celebrate the holidays in a remote French chateau. Then a woman is brutally murdered, and the sad, eerie child Tatiana declares she knows who did it. The subsequent inquiry into the death, however, proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of identity, love, insatiable rage, and sadistic desire. The Unloved offers a bold and revealing look at some of the events that shaped European and African history, and the perils of a future founded on concealed truth.

The stunning debut novel from the two-time Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything, Deborah Levy. _________________________________ Levy's surreal and artful first novel, Beautiful Mutants, introduces Lapinski -- the manipulative and magical Russian exile who summons forth a number of urban pilgrims in a shimmering contemporary allegory about broken dreams and desires . . . _________________________________ 'A stunningly original writer' Kirsty Gunn 'It throbs its way into the imagination like the unguided missiles it decries' Observer 'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette Winterson

The influence of Roland Barthes on contemporary culture has been the subject of much analysis, but never before has this influence been closely examined in relation to poetry. This innovative study traces Anglophone poetry’s response to the literary and cultural theory of Barthes — from debate to adoption, adaptation and rejection.