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August Blue

A Novel

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August Blue

Written by: Deborah Levy
Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
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About this listen

The mesmerising new novel from the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? The air was electric between us, the way we transmitted our feelings to each other as they flowed through our arms, which were touching.

At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson—former child prodigy, now in her thirties—walks off the stage in Vienna, midperformance.

Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase 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, on the run from her talent and her history.

So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double. A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, Deborah Levy’s August Blue uncovers the ways in which we attempt to revise our oldest stories and make ourselves anew.

©2023 Deborah Levy (P)2023 Hamish Hamilton Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction
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What the critics say

One of

Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2023”

“[August Blue] offers glimpses of Levy’s talent as a stylist. She can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors.” —The New York Times

“This meditative novel starts at a flea market in Athens, where a pianist named Elsa, who recently interrupted her career after a disastrous concert, catches sight of a woman who seems to be her double. . . . As the novel quickens to a climactic encounter between Elsa and her doppelgänger, it becomes a rumination on identity, desire, and the passage from self-effacement to self-discovery.” ―The New Yorker

“Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . [August Blue is] a lyrical, surreal trip of self-discovery—one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images.” —Leila Slimani, author of The Perfect Nanny

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Disappointed

Very disappointed read. I didn’t understand the story and characters underdeveloped. I had bigger expectations.

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