Deborah Levy, Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival

Booker-nominated Deborah Levy reads new poem, An Amorous Discourse, ahead of its publication this October for the Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival.

An accountant, dreaming of the perfect Christmas that has eluded him, meets an angel descended from heaven to save him from his loneliness. Despite his ennui, however, the task of opening his mind proves more difficult than she could have ever expected.

Deborah Levy’s new poem takes the familiar outline of It’s A Wonderful Life and transforms it into a boisterous voyage through suburban purgatory. Part philosophical disquisition on the nature of freedom, part slapstick romp, it’s a diabolical tour-de-force straddling heaven and earth. Ahead of its publication in October, Levy reads An Amorous Discourse for the Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival.

Though best known for her Booker-prize nominated Swimming Home (2011), Levy has been one of the most idiosyncratic voices in English fiction, poetry and drama since the 1980s. Critics have praised her secretive, conspiratorial prose, laced with hidden daggers and imaginative phrasing. She fuses experimental vigour with a graceful delicacy. Since 2011, her works have been published by And Other Stories, whose selection of innovative fiction is matched by their ground-breaking subscription service.