August Blue, by Deborah Levy

 The mesmerising new novel from the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk  and Swimming Home

At the height of her career, concert pianist Elsa M. Anderson - former child prodigy, now in her thirties - walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance.

Now she is in Athens, watching as another young woman, a stranger but uncannily familiar - almost her double - purchases a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history.

So begins a journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who bought the dancing horses.

A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, August Blue uncovers the ways in which we seek to lose an old story, find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.

'Deborah Levy writes like a dream and I mean that quite literally' Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

'A virtuosic novel of identity and breakdown . . . [it] flickers constantly between comedy and darkness. You know you'll read August Blue again' M John Harrison, Guardian