The Man Who Saw Everything

Longlisted For The Booker Prize 2019 Shortlisted For The Goldsmiths Prize 2019 'an Utterly Beguiling Fever Dream Of A Novel... Its Sheer Technical Bravura Places It Head And Shoulder Above Pretty Much Everything Else On The [booker] Longlist' Daily Telegraph 'an Ice-cold Skewering Of Patriarchy, Humanity And The Darkness Of The 20th Century Europe' The Times 'the Man Who Had Nearly Run Me Over Had Touched My Hair, As If He Were Touching A Statue Or Something Without A Heartbeat...' In 1988 Saul Adler (a Narcissistic, Young Historian) Is Hit By A Car On The Abbey Road. He Is Apparently Fine; He Gets Up And Goes To See His Art Student Girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They Have Sex Then Break Up, But Not Before She Has Photographed Saul Crossing The Same Abbey Road. Saul Leaves To Study In Communist East Berlin, Two Months Before The Wall Comes Down. There He Will Encounter - Significantly - Both His Assigned Translator And His Translator's Sister, Who Swears She Has Seen A Jaguar Prowling The City. He Will Fall In Love And Brood Upon His Difficult, Authoritarian Father. And He Will Befriend A Hippy, Rainer, Who May Or May Not Be A Stasi Agent, But Will Certainly Return To Haunt Him In Middle Age. Slipping Slyly Between Time Zones And Leaving A Spiralling Trail, Deborah Levy's Electrifying 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. 'levy Writes On The High Wire, Unfalteringly' Marina Warner 'it's Clever, Raw And Doesn't Play By Any Rules' Evening Standard 'intelligent And Supple...a Dizzying Tale Of Life Across Time And Borders' Finanical Times LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2019 'An ice-cold skewering of patriarchy, humanity and the darkness of 20th century Europe' The Times _________________________________ 'It's like this, Saul Adler.' 'No, it's like this, Jennifer Moreau.' In 1988, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. Apparently fine, he gets up and poses for a photograph taken by his girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. He carries this photo with him to East Berlin: a fragment of the present, an anchor to the West. But in the GDR he finds himself troubled by time - stalked by the spectres of history, slipping in and out of a future that does not yet exist. Until, in 2016, Saul attempts to cross the Abbey Road again . . . _________________________________ 'A time-bending, location-hopping tale of love, truth and the power of seeing. Thoroughly gripping' Sunday Telegraph 'Writing so beautiful it stops the reader on the page' Independent 'Levy splices time in artfully believable, mesmerizing strokes' Lambda Literary 'Skewering totalitarianism - from the state, to the family, to the strictures of the male gaze - Levy explodes conventional narrative to explore the individual's place and culpability within history' Guardian 'An utterly beguiling fever dream' Daily Telegraph "An electrifying and audacious novel about beauty, envy, and carelessness by Deborah Levy, two-time Man Booker Prize finalist. It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator's sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul's girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life--and this story of good intentions and reckless actions. The Man Who Saw Everything is about the difficulty of seeing ourselves and others clearly. It greets the specters that come back to haunt old and new love, previous and current incarnations of Europe, conscious and unconscious transgressions, and real and imagined betrayals, while investigating the cyclic nature of history and its reinvention by people in power. Here, Levy traverses the vast reaches of the human imagination while artfully blurring sexual and political binaries--feminine and masculine, East and West, past and present--to reveal the full spectrum of our world."-- Provided by publisher.