August Blue

A bestseller of the Sunday Times and Book of the Year 2023 according to the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, and Time Magazine.

Levy's lyrical, perfectly tuned prose is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us, and the inner music that guides the rhythms of our dance through life and love.

This captivating new novel by the twice Booker Prize-nominated author of "Hot Milk" and "Swimming Home" follows concert pianist Elsa M. Anderson, a former child prodigy now in her thirties, who walks off stage during a performance in Vienna.

Now in Athens, she observes another young woman, a stranger who seems eerily familiar—almost her double—buying a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, fleeing from her talent and her past.

Thus begins a journey through Europe, pursued by the elusive woman who bought the dancing horses. A radiant portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, "August Blue" reveals the ways we try to let go of an old story, find ourselves in others, and recreate ourselves.

"Deborah Levy writes like a dream, and I mean that quite literally." - Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman.

"A virtuoso novel about identity and decay... it constantly wavers between comedy and darkness. You know you will read 'August Blue' again." - M John Harrison, Guardian.