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Swimming Home
- Author
- Deborah Levy
- Narrator
- Sophie Ward
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 25 November 2025
- Run Time
- 4 hours 24 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
"Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review
As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?
A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.
Critics Review
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Swimming Home is unlike anything but itself . . . . Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel.
The New York Times Book Review
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Elegant . . . subtle . . . uncanny . . . The seductive pleasure of Levy's prose stems from its layered brilliance . . . [Swimming Home is] witty right up until it's unbearably sad.
The Washington Post
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Here is an excellent story, told with the subtlety and menacing tension of a veteran playwright.
The Wall Street Journal
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Exquisite . . . Levy's sense of dramatic form, as she hastens us toward the grim finale, is unerring, and her precise, dispassionate prose effortlessly summons people and landscapes.
The New Yorker
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Ms. Levy is a stealthy storyteller, lulling us while busy scattering clues.
The New York Times
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Wholly new, fresh and, yes, profound . . . [Swimming Home] floats like a wasp, and stings like one too.
The Denver Post
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Deborah Levy
- Narrator
- Sophie Ward
- Duration
- 4 hours 24 minutes
- Release Date
- 25 November 2025
- ISBN
- 9781639739592
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, read by Sophie WardShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize "Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book ReviewAs he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.
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