Deborah Levy: The Man Who Saw Everything

In 1988, Saul Adler crosses the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road in London. He gets (perhaps then, perhaps later) hit by a car. Seemingly injured, he visits his girlfriend, artist Jennifer Moreau; they split up after engaging in sex. As a historian, Saul then carries out a research trip to East Germany just before the fall of the wall, where he enters a bizarre frenzy of Marxism, eroticism, guilt, and pop culture all blending to make a chaotic whole, focusing on what people are willing to overlook to convey an impression – in the eyes of History and our own eyes – of being who we want to believe we are. How much damage do we cause ourselves and the people around us by supressing things? The Man Who Saw Everything is a novel that deconstructs itself so that it can be reassembled in the end, which leads us to finish the last page and instantly start reading it all over again.

The novel was translated by Jernej Županič.

Deborah Levy is one of the UK’s most prominent contemporary writers and playwrights, and one of the great thinkers of our time. Her masterful autobiographical collection is regarded as a ground-breaking work of autofiction and a major essayistic accomplishment. Her novels have received several nominations for the Man Booker Prize, including The Man Who Saw Everything (2019).

Due to the pandemic and measures against the spread of COVID-19, the literary event with Deborah Levy will take place virtually. The recording of the virtual conversation with the author, prepared by the Fabula film crew, will be hosted Slovenian editor, publicist and doctor of history Manca G. Renko. The recording will have Slovenian subtitles and will premiere on Cankarjev dom's website, www.cd-cc.si, and Cankarjev dom's social media channels.