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Deborah Levy: Why the Novel Matters

Prize-winning novelist, playwright and memoirist Deborah Levy delivers the 2024 New Statesman/Goldsmiths Prize Lecture, on the unique potential of the novel.

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Deborah Levy sits in front of a curtain and rests her head on her hand.

The Goldsmiths Prize celebrates fiction that breaks the mould, and in its annual lecture series leading authors their thoughts on the art of the novel.

For her talk, Deborah Levy argues that the novel uniquely gives close attention to the ways we negotiate with reality, which is the core of all writing and living.

In this personal manifesto on why the novel matters, she contends that it is the form that can most freely unmask the co-existence of immense power and vulnerability in its human protagonists.

After her lecture, Levy takes part in a conversation with Tom Gatti, executive culture editor at The New Statesman.

Presented in partnership with the Goldsmiths Prize and The New Statesman

Need to know

Age guidance
For ages 16+

For your visit

This event is held at the Purcell Room Southbank Centre

The Purcell Room is located in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.