Swimming Home

A Novel

By: Deborah Levy

Narrated by: Sophie Ward

Bloomsbury presents Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, read by Sophie Ward

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.

©2025 Deborah Levy (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

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. (Francine Prose)

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. (Ron Charles)

Here is an excellent story, told with the subtlety and menacing tension of a veteran playwright. (Sam Sacks)

Ms. Levy is a stealthy storyteller, lulling us while busy scattering clues. (Susannah Meadows)

Wholly new, fresh and, yes, profound . . . [Swimming Home] floats like a wasp, and stings like one too. (Tucker Shaw)