Swimming Home Paperback by Deborah Levy

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2026-06-02)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 176 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781037802812
• Item Weight: 170.1 grams
• Dimensions: 20.19 x 13.16 x 1.14 cm

FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD’S AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

“Exquisite.” ―The New Yorker

“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

“An excellent story, told with subtlety and menacing tension.” ―The Wall Street Journal

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?

Deborah Levy's writing combines linguistic virtuosity, technical brilliance and a strong sense of what it means to be alive. A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.

About the Author

DEBORAH LEVY writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. She is the author of several highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (longlisted for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl; the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka; and a three-part autobiography, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. She lives in London and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.