Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood, testing the bonds of parent and child to breaking point.

Two strangers arrive in a small Spanish fishing village. The older woman is suffering from mysterious paralysis, driven to seek a cure beyond the bounds of conventional medicine. Her daughter Sofia has spent years playing the reluctant detective in this mystery, struggling to understand her mother's illness. Surrounded by the oppressive desert heat, searching for a cure to a defiant and quite possibly imagined disease, Sofia is forced to confront her difficult relationship with her mother.

Shortlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2016
Published by
Hamish Hamilton
Publication date
Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy

About the Author

Deborah Levy is the author of seven novels, and she has been shortlisted twice for the Goldsmiths Prize and three times for the Booker Prize.
More about Deborah Levy

Other nominated books by Deborah Levy

The Man Who Saw Everything
Swimming Home