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Landschaft verschluckt
"Es gefällt dir, dass ich einfach nur J.K. genannt werde", sagt sie zu ihrem Kompagnon, der von ihrer Ungebundenheit, ihrem Freiheitsdrang weiß. "Du trägst sogar im Bett Schuhe, damit du vor mir wegrennen kannst." Bleibt man für den anderen immer fremd, ganz gleich, wie nah man sich kommt?
In diesem frühen Roman von Deborah Levy ist eine junge Frau wie ihr "Namensvetter" Jack Kerouac on the road – in einer sich immer schneller drehenden, zunehmend fragmentierten Welt.
"J.K. ist die Streunerin, die Pennerin, die Emigrantin, die Geflüchtete, die Deportierte, die Spaziergängerin, die umherziehende Spielerin. Manchmal wäre sie gern eine Siedlerin, aber Neugier, Trauer und Entfremdung verhindern das."
J.K. will mit leichtem Gepäck unterwegs sein, aber die Last ihrer Herkunft, der Erinnerungen wiegt schwer. Und wohin geht eigentlich diese Reise?
In diesem frühen Roman von Deborah Levy ist eine junge Frau wie ihr "Namensvetter" Jack Kerouac on the road – in einer sich immer schneller drehenden, zunehmend fragmentierten Welt.
"J.K. ist die Streunerin, die Pennerin, die Emigrantin, die Geflüchtete, die Deportierte, die Spaziergängerin, die umherziehende Spielerin. Manchmal wäre sie gern eine Siedlerin, aber Neugier, Trauer und Entfremdung verhindern das."
J.K. will mit leichtem Gepäck unterwegs sein, aber die Last ihrer Herkunft, der Erinnerungen wiegt schwer. Und wohin geht eigentlich diese Reise?
128 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 1993
36 people are currently reading
1552 people want to read
About the author
Deborah Levy
65 books3,698 followersDeborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination", including PAX, HERESIES for the Royal Shakespeare Company, CLAM, CALL BLUE JANE, SHINY NYLON, HONEY BABY MIDDLE ENGLAND, PUSHING THE PRINCE INTO DENMARK and MACBETH-FALSE MEMORIES, some of which are published in LEVY: PLAYS 1 (Methuen)
Deborah wrote and published her first novel BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (Vintage), when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret, was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. These include, SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY, THE UNLOVED (Vintage) and BILLY and GIRL (Bloomsbury). She has always written across a number of art forms (see Bookworks and Collaborations with visual artists) and was Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991.
Deborah wrote and published her first novel BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (Vintage), when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret, was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. These include, SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY, THE UNLOVED (Vintage) and BILLY and GIRL (Bloomsbury). She has always written across a number of art forms (see Bookworks and Collaborations with visual artists) and was Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
March 30, 2021
Could not tell u what the fuck happened in this book but it was excellent vibes
September 28, 2016
This is a very surreal book. Levy throws away all the things that you might consider conventional in a novel (plot, characterisation, coherence, for examples) and throws something at you that it is simply not possible to grasp mentally. At least, I couldn't. But, and I think this is maybe the point, it is possible to respond emotionally to the deluge of images, the seemingly disconnected fragments. If there's a plot of any kind to be found, it centres on J.K. and her wanderings around Europe and her dealings with various lovers. Plus, Trotsky and Lenin somehow contrive to make appearances.
It's very short (just 72 pages, I believe, although the "real page numbers" on my Kindle went mad and started at page "107 of iv" and counted from there) and leaves you feeling rather disoriented at the end. But, along the way, it asks questions about identity (coincidentally, a similar theme to the last book I read (The Echo Maker) - isn't it strange how randomly chosen books sometimes seem to group together?). By messing around with everything that you might use to identify yourself (name, relationships, home, community, for example), it makes you stop and think.
Plus, it is tremendous fun to read because no one else writes quite like Levy.
By the way, I can't claim credit for many of these ideas about this book. I was floundering a bit until I read this review which helped enormously: Independent Review.
It's very short (just 72 pages, I believe, although the "real page numbers" on my Kindle went mad and started at page "107 of iv" and counted from there) and leaves you feeling rather disoriented at the end. But, along the way, it asks questions about identity (coincidentally, a similar theme to the last book I read (The Echo Maker) - isn't it strange how randomly chosen books sometimes seem to group together?). By messing around with everything that you might use to identify yourself (name, relationships, home, community, for example), it makes you stop and think.
Plus, it is tremendous fun to read because no one else writes quite like Levy.
By the way, I can't claim credit for many of these ideas about this book. I was floundering a bit until I read this review which helped enormously: Independent Review.
June 28, 2014
Deborah Levy’s second novella is a near-perfect creation taking us into the nomadic realm of J.K.—a loveless and forlorn nation-hopper who takes lovers and flees. Elegant poetic prose, sprightly playfulness, and complex untangling of dark psyches. Levy’s trademarks in evidence in this beautifully titled novella. Recently republished.
May 17, 2022
I'm in love with Deborah Levy
April 5, 2023
3.5* trotsky and lenin somehow were there. they were horny and time travelling question mark
September 18, 2016
As much as I have loved all of the others of Levy's books I've read, this left me perplexed and rather disappointed. Experimental to be sure, and has sections that are as good as any of the rest of her work, but there isn't a strong narrative thread or even thematic through line, that I could decipher.
January 16, 2020
The narrative was all over the place and for some reason I couldn't connect with the story nor the characters, my least favourite work by Levy for sure.
Can be avoided.
Can be avoided.
June 29, 2023
lenin what are you doing here
March 4, 2023
Was ist das denn? Dachte ich mir während der ersten Hälfte dieser Lektüre - es fühlte sich an wie ein Haufen feiner Sand, der einfach nicht in der Hand bleiben will. Bis ich entdeckte, dass das Lebensgefühl immer öfter genau dieser Erfahrung entspricht. Nichts Festes mehr, nichts Gewisses, alles ist flüssig und rinnt davon, bevor man es zu fassen bekommt. Nicht umsonst feiert der Bedarf nach Identität fröhliche Urständ. Und nicht nur in der Ecke, in der man es erwarten würde. Wo doch Identität selbst nur unfassbarer Sand ist, nicht mehr als eine Halluzination und flüchtiger als ein Geist.
Deborah Levy hat dieses schmale Büchlein 1992 geschrieben, und dafür ist es ziemlich visionär.
Deborah Levy hat dieses schmale Büchlein 1992 geschrieben, und dafür ist es ziemlich visionär.
August 8, 2024
“we return to homelands and find they are a hallucination. We return to our mothers and fathers and find they are not the people we thought they were. We return to our street and find it has been re-named. We return to our cities and find they have been rebuilt. We return to our lovers and find they are elsewhere even when they lie in our bed. We return to our people and find they have been massacred and we were not there to defend them.”
“absence is often more interesting than presence.”
“Although she is walking forwards, one foot in front of the other, she is also walking backwards. This is because she is thinking of her past. Beginnings and endings curl into each other like a snake with its tail in its mouth.”
“Each new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind. The wanderer sometimes tries to recreate what has been left behind, in a new place. This always fails. To muster courage and endurance for a journey, it has to be embarked on with something like ambivalence. To retreat is to wane, fade, shrink, get less. This suggests that the privileged, who are not used to retreating, swell, expand and get more.”
“absence is often more interesting than presence.”
“Although she is walking forwards, one foot in front of the other, she is also walking backwards. This is because she is thinking of her past. Beginnings and endings curl into each other like a snake with its tail in its mouth.”
“Each new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind. The wanderer sometimes tries to recreate what has been left behind, in a new place. This always fails. To muster courage and endurance for a journey, it has to be embarked on with something like ambivalence. To retreat is to wane, fade, shrink, get less. This suggests that the privileged, who are not used to retreating, swell, expand and get more.”
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August 14, 2024Ik hou zo van Deborah Levy - dit boekje is zo vreemd en desoriënterend en soms voelt het alsof het heel wiskundig over schrijven en het creëren van werelden gaat, heel wijs en mooi en raar.
June 17, 2024
What insufferable pretentious shite! There was nothing, absolutely nothing enjoyable about listening to this excuse for fiction writing.
I listened, I fast forwarded, I fucked it off back to the library loan section from whence it came!
I listened, I fast forwarded, I fucked it off back to the library loan section from whence it came!
November 17, 2016
"Is it possible that classic rules of forms and structure do not fit this experience of existing and not existing at the same time."
Swallowing Geography was Deborah Levy's 2nd novel(la), just 85 pages, published in 1993, following her debut Beautiful Mutants (my review)
Whereas her first novel took its inspiration from the materialism of 1980s Britain, Swallowing Geography is set against a background of the first Gulf War and the reunification of Germany. The theme of displacement and migration from the first novel comes through even stronger here.
And the prose and imagery is even more fragmentary. This review from the Independent at the time (h/t to Neil's review) expresses it well:
"She is the wanderer, bum, emigre, refugee, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief and disaffection forbid it.
...
Sometimes she is visible and sometimes she is invisible. This is not because she is a ghost or a mystic, but because some people want to see her and some people do not.
...
Both intimate and alien, she can touch the world with a phantom hand.
...
she is Europe's eerie child, and she is part of the storm."
In J.K. we also see glimpses of the more sardonic characters in Levy's later novels, such as Sophie from Hot Milk, via J.K's left-field observations:
"On the aeroplane over here, the air hostess demonstrated various ways of surviving an aircrash. She said we must blow on a whistle to attract attention to ourselves. Don't you think that's a little narcissistic?"
The images in the novel over-multiply at first, leaving the reader disorientated. At one point J.K. "looks around her room; a little saucer full of yellow canary feathers, pebbles, postcards, a bag full of coins, an address book, a white bowl on a stand, a photograph of Gregory, a cashew nut in its shell - not unlike a foetus - a poster of a man with a dragonfly taped to his forehead, a green ribbon, the letters XYZ scrawled on the back of an envelope in felt pen, a picture of an orange hand with six fingers, ALIEN written underneath it, and a 1936 Smith Corona typewriter,", most of which feature somewhere in the 80 brief pages alongside a guest appearance from Trotsky.
But Levy brings out the theme of the novel, albeit not by pulling together all these threads, more clearly at the story ends. The wanderer "Y" skinny dips in a river, watched by her local lover "X":
"He, the settler, present, visible and somewhere, is reluctant to swim with the wanderer at a strange hour. He has a home and has Z to return to. He will return wet and Z will ask him why... 'Don't swallow the water.' he shouts.
She swallows and swallows the water. And as she swallows she swallows the possibility she will always be alone. Swallows the river that will flow into the sea that is made from other waters that have flowed from mountains and hills, that will leak into oceans. She swallows geography, learns to swim in changing tides and temperatures, learns to speak in many tongues. She does this because she has no choice but to do so, and she comes out of the river to find him there, holding her earrings in his hand, and he says, 'But they don't fit. Who are you?."
A less satisfying read than Beautiful Mutants but perhaps a more powerful message, and as with the earlier novel, it is fascinating to see the emergence of the author Deborah Levy would become.
Swallowing Geography was Deborah Levy's 2nd novel(la), just 85 pages, published in 1993, following her debut Beautiful Mutants (my review)
Whereas her first novel took its inspiration from the materialism of 1980s Britain, Swallowing Geography is set against a background of the first Gulf War and the reunification of Germany. The theme of displacement and migration from the first novel comes through even stronger here.
And the prose and imagery is even more fragmentary. This review from the Independent at the time (h/t to Neil's review) expresses it well:
Swallowing Geography is the sort of novel which doesn't behave like a novel - the sort that can usually be put in its place by applying the label 'experimental'. Less than 100 pages, its matter is congealed into six dense, disorienting chapters with vatic titles like 'Riding the Tiger' and 'Book of the Open Mouth'. With no linear narrative to speak of, it is less a stream of consciousness than a heap of broken images. "The novel is told from the perspective of J.K. (she herself can't even remember what it stands for)
"She is the wanderer, bum, emigre, refugee, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief and disaffection forbid it.
...
Sometimes she is visible and sometimes she is invisible. This is not because she is a ghost or a mystic, but because some people want to see her and some people do not.
...
Both intimate and alien, she can touch the world with a phantom hand.
...
she is Europe's eerie child, and she is part of the storm."
In J.K. we also see glimpses of the more sardonic characters in Levy's later novels, such as Sophie from Hot Milk, via J.K's left-field observations:
"On the aeroplane over here, the air hostess demonstrated various ways of surviving an aircrash. She said we must blow on a whistle to attract attention to ourselves. Don't you think that's a little narcissistic?"
The images in the novel over-multiply at first, leaving the reader disorientated. At one point J.K. "looks around her room; a little saucer full of yellow canary feathers, pebbles, postcards, a bag full of coins, an address book, a white bowl on a stand, a photograph of Gregory, a cashew nut in its shell - not unlike a foetus - a poster of a man with a dragonfly taped to his forehead, a green ribbon, the letters XYZ scrawled on the back of an envelope in felt pen, a picture of an orange hand with six fingers, ALIEN written underneath it, and a 1936 Smith Corona typewriter,", most of which feature somewhere in the 80 brief pages alongside a guest appearance from Trotsky.
But Levy brings out the theme of the novel, albeit not by pulling together all these threads, more clearly at the story ends. The wanderer "Y" skinny dips in a river, watched by her local lover "X":
"He, the settler, present, visible and somewhere, is reluctant to swim with the wanderer at a strange hour. He has a home and has Z to return to. He will return wet and Z will ask him why... 'Don't swallow the water.' he shouts.
She swallows and swallows the water. And as she swallows she swallows the possibility she will always be alone. Swallows the river that will flow into the sea that is made from other waters that have flowed from mountains and hills, that will leak into oceans. She swallows geography, learns to swim in changing tides and temperatures, learns to speak in many tongues. She does this because she has no choice but to do so, and she comes out of the river to find him there, holding her earrings in his hand, and he says, 'But they don't fit. Who are you?."
A less satisfying read than Beautiful Mutants but perhaps a more powerful message, and as with the earlier novel, it is fascinating to see the emergence of the author Deborah Levy would become.
April 19, 2022
4.3/5
Random at times but such a good book for when you feel lost, geographically and metaphorically. Also contains my favourite quote so you know I love it for that <3
Quotes:
Is home a good place? Or just somewhere to return to?
... places she has run away from in search of an imagined place, a place that is not this place, a place that is not that place, a place that is - a place that, like the words War and Peace, is perhaps just an idea.
<3 ... we return to homelands and find they are a hallucination. We return to our mothers and fathers and find they are not the people we thought they were. We return to our street and find it has been re-named. We return to our cities and find they have been rebuilt. We return to our lovers and find they are elsewhere even when they lie in our bed. (...) The redemptive homeland, she is a joker, she runs away bells ringing on her toes, you chase her at your peril because she will appear disguised as something else and you will be chasing her all your life, watching her fickle back turn corners.
She is the wanderer, bum, émigré, refugee, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief and disaffection forbid it. She is however in love with the settler X, he being all that she is not.
I have been described somewhere but I don't know where to find myself.
Every new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind.
Both kept trying to find something recognizable, familiar in the other, but they could not.
Random at times but such a good book for when you feel lost, geographically and metaphorically. Also contains my favourite quote so you know I love it for that <3
Quotes:
Is home a good place? Or just somewhere to return to?
... places she has run away from in search of an imagined place, a place that is not this place, a place that is not that place, a place that is - a place that, like the words War and Peace, is perhaps just an idea.
<3 ... we return to homelands and find they are a hallucination. We return to our mothers and fathers and find they are not the people we thought they were. We return to our street and find it has been re-named. We return to our cities and find they have been rebuilt. We return to our lovers and find they are elsewhere even when they lie in our bed. (...) The redemptive homeland, she is a joker, she runs away bells ringing on her toes, you chase her at your peril because she will appear disguised as something else and you will be chasing her all your life, watching her fickle back turn corners.
She is the wanderer, bum, émigré, refugee, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief and disaffection forbid it. She is however in love with the settler X, he being all that she is not.
I have been described somewhere but I don't know where to find myself.
Every new journey is a mourning for what has been left behind.
Both kept trying to find something recognizable, familiar in the other, but they could not.
January 4, 2018
quite a departure from 'Beautiful Mutants' but equally as sprawlingly spectacular and gifted... reading this made me remember all the times i was a traveller and a foreigner and a tourist and a wanderer and a misfit and a vagabond... full of so may phrases and thoughts and imagery... painful to read, at times, achingly raw in others... always stunning and fabulously written...
October 24, 2024
So glad I started with the living autobiography because otherwise Deborah Levy’s early books would make no fucking sense
March 28, 2020
Just beautiful, I love the way Levy writes. J.K., like Jack Kerouac, travels around with her typewriter, in this dreamlike, fragmented story, where each place she encounters is layered with the memories of other lives. It is a story of displaced people and a longing for home, interspersed with forgetting. I’m sure there are many references that went over my head, but even purely on a sentence level this is just stunning.
April 26, 2024
this was such a bizarre read and choosing to read it over my 27 hour journey to japan definitely made the vibe of it even more surreal. the theme of untetheredness, floating in space, kept coming up, and it made for a perfect read for airport lounges and planes and sleepless hours floating in nothingness 11 thousand feet above the ground
December 9, 2022
Weird in a good way, literary in a bad way.
March 4, 2025
very dreamlike, and you have to let yourself float between passages (which i enjoy). not for everyone but i enjoyed just vibing with the imagery and would definitely return to this for a nice summer holibobs read. i did not really connect or vibe with J.K. for some reason, i suppose she is meant to be kept somewhat vague and intangible. really liked the writing around her relationship with her mother though.
high 4
high 4
June 22, 2021
“She swallows and swallows the water. And as she swallows she swallows the possibility she will always be alone. Swallows the river that will flow into the sea that is made from other waters that have flowed from mountains and hills, that will leak into oceans. She swallows geography, learns to swim in changing tides and temperatures, learns different strokes of the arms and legs, learns to speak in many tongues"
Deborah Levy's novella is the story of the unnamed J.K (we're never told her name) who is a drifter, a traveler, a nomad. She's someone who is on the run - from her mother, from stability, from intimacy, and even herself. But when she travels, she nurses dreams of being tethered - a feeling, a regret that comes and goes. The book is written less as a linear plot and more as vignettes that take us though different countries with the Gulf War in the backdrop. Somehow Trotsky and Lenin also make cameos. And we follow J.K through these strangely disjointed experiences in the hope for answers.
Honestly, I don't know what happened in the end. I'm not sure if I missed something or there was no effort to end it conclusively. The lack of plot and structure worked against the book although the idea of a protagonist feeling disconnected from places and looking over her life through fragments and objects was interesting. I enjoyed Levy's trademark fiery prose but felt it came at the cost of the story. Mixed feelings about Swallowing Geography.
Deborah Levy's novella is the story of the unnamed J.K (we're never told her name) who is a drifter, a traveler, a nomad. She's someone who is on the run - from her mother, from stability, from intimacy, and even herself. But when she travels, she nurses dreams of being tethered - a feeling, a regret that comes and goes. The book is written less as a linear plot and more as vignettes that take us though different countries with the Gulf War in the backdrop. Somehow Trotsky and Lenin also make cameos. And we follow J.K through these strangely disjointed experiences in the hope for answers.
Honestly, I don't know what happened in the end. I'm not sure if I missed something or there was no effort to end it conclusively. The lack of plot and structure worked against the book although the idea of a protagonist feeling disconnected from places and looking over her life through fragments and objects was interesting. I enjoyed Levy's trademark fiery prose but felt it came at the cost of the story. Mixed feelings about Swallowing Geography.
July 28, 2014
would it be worth it to be dazzled, wined, dined, and fucked silly, if it was only for one night? your lover soon to take off in the jet, never to be seen again?
or play it safe, never go near that person, stay in town, go shopping for the cats, read about lovers on tumblr?
levy's always pick the first one.
or play it safe, never go near that person, stay in town, go shopping for the cats, read about lovers on tumblr?
levy's always pick the first one.
May 12, 2022
"..occupying public space, not with melancholy or eccentricity, but as a matter of fact?"
Beautiful coffee read. Loved the metaphors. Hated the first few pages, too eurocentric. Loved the end, very global : ardently imploring geographies and nation states.
Beautiful coffee read. Loved the metaphors. Hated the first few pages, too eurocentric. Loved the end, very global : ardently imploring geographies and nation states.
March 30, 2019
Reading these after loving Levy's memoirs. I love the writing but didn't super enjoy the book.
September 23, 2021
Erscheint am 14.10. beim Aki Verlag als "Landschaft verschluckt".
February 3, 2022
Yeah this one was a mood but I just finished it and couldn’t tell you one thing about it.
August 3, 2023
Early Levy wandering through countries, souls and emotions.
November 16, 2025
“It is possible that classic rules of form and structure do not fit this experience of existing and not existing at the same time.”
This is early Levy- her second novel. It’s hard to knock a book for being non-linear and difficult to fully grasp when the book is written to be just that. J.K. has an angry mother, a friend who is dying of AIDs, and she travels from place to place meeting strangers and different lovers.
As someone who very much cherishes the idea of home and comfort, I really liked the ideas this explored. One of her lovers visits her temporary room and says “In this room you have made yourself a world that pleases you.”
This definitely has hints of Hot Milk (2016) and August Blue (2023) and I think the ideas began within this book (1993) are fully fledged out in those two later novels. Very exploratory and unconventional but in a classic emotional Deborah Levy style.
This is early Levy- her second novel. It’s hard to knock a book for being non-linear and difficult to fully grasp when the book is written to be just that. J.K. has an angry mother, a friend who is dying of AIDs, and she travels from place to place meeting strangers and different lovers.
As someone who very much cherishes the idea of home and comfort, I really liked the ideas this explored. One of her lovers visits her temporary room and says “In this room you have made yourself a world that pleases you.”
This definitely has hints of Hot Milk (2016) and August Blue (2023) and I think the ideas began within this book (1993) are fully fledged out in those two later novels. Very exploratory and unconventional but in a classic emotional Deborah Levy style.
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August 10, 2021"The sun is gentle, the ocean emerald, and somewhere windmills, a reddening creeper, a small garden with table and chair outside overlooking the sea. J.K. wants to sit there. Very badly. But she is not invited. She wants her own table and chair and garden and she hasn't got one. Insurmountable obstacles seem to deny her the possibility of ever claiming them. What does she have to do to get them? Why have some people got them and not her? To have a home is to have a biography. A narrative to refer to in years to come."
September 19, 2022
I’m confused because I thought I wrote a review and yet I don’t see it but I just want to explain that it felt a bit disjointed even if this may have been the intention. Some poetic moments were lovely but too few and far between for me to comprehend much of what I was reading. Maybe this was the point, though? Format contributing towards its own meaning? Perhaps
Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews