Real Estate

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography'

Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.

'I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it - but we must also knock it down.'

'Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A Pandemic. A love story.'

'I can't think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman' Observer on The Cost of Living

'Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy's every sentence is a masterpiece of clarity and poise... A brilliant writer' Daily Telegraph on The Cost of Living

'Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor-sharp insights' Financial Times on The Cost of Living

© Deborah Levy 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

  • A beautifully crafted and thought-provoking snapshot of a life

    Evening Standard

  • One of those wise books where you want to underline every sentence

    Good Housekeeping

  • Her reflections on domesticity, freedom and romance are so beautiful, I found myself underlining multiple sentences a page. Wry, warm and uplifting, it’s a book I’ll return to again and again.

    Stylist

  • The narrator of Real Estate is drily funny, irreverent, curious, even wise; she makes the reader want her for a companion . . . each of the books [in Levy’s living autobiography series] bears several re-readings; together, they offer one version of how a woman might continually rewrite her own story.

    The Observer

  • Levy is experimenting with language in subversive ways

    Literary Review

  • This is a work about what it means to be a writer: its reinventions, isolations, self-interrogations, its shifting penury and riches, both emotional and financial. . . [Levy’s living autobiography series is] a glittering triple echo of books that are as much philosophical discourse as a manifesto for living and writing.

    Financial Times

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