Beautiful Mutants (1989)

by Deborah Levy

Beautiful Mutants, Deborah Levy’s first novel, published in 1989, follows Lapinski, a mysterious Russian exile. Levy conjures a series of beautiful mutants, from the Poet, who works on a conveyor belt making burgers, to the Banker, a pyromaniac. It is a short novel, effectively a novella, which is bold and unsettling. While it is certainly worth reading, Deborah Levy’s debut is an acquired taste as its surrealist quality makes it difficult to trace what is happening, and where the novel is going. Beautiful Mutants has recently been published alongside Swallowing Geography, originally published in 1993, to showcase Levy’s innovative early works.