Initially an incisive novel set in East Berlin, that twisted into a haunting and surreal novel about guilt, regret and perspective. Deborah Levy is a fine writer, and this is my favourite work of hers yet.

A snapshot of life in the time of the German Democratic Republic and a flashback to London in the 80’s. Our character’s story swings from era to era and we relive his important life events.
An interesting and unusual story that I thoroughly enjoyed. I liked how we went from Saul being 28 and his experiences then, to a Saul in his 50s.
It felt like a story of Rites of Passage from youth and all the angst that brings through to adulthood, post desires and mistakes - such that we all make and experience. A very worthwhile story to read. I would recommend it.

Deborah Levy is one of my favourite authors, due to her poetic writing style and post-modernist take on life and reality. “The man who saw everything” is an exploration of the passing of time and the perception of relationships and events. It is written in a deceptively clear and visual style, akin to another of my favourite authors, Haruki Murakami.
I frequently feel the need to reread her sentences, due to the poetic framing of words, as well as the philosophy contained within. She is an exceptional writer.
This particular book, however, is not one of my favourites. I found it difficult to relate to the main character, due to his egotism and abandonment of those he loved. Also, due to the way the novel is constructed, I felt that there was minimal development in his growth as a human being.
The novel left me with a feeling of sadness, due to the perception of someone who had wasted a nihilistic life in the pursuit of his desires.
Having said that, Deborah Levy’s books are always a joy to read, stylishly written, and containing complex ideas on life and it’s meaning or lack of it.
I highly recommend reading any of Deborah Levy’s books, in particular “Swimming Home”. Thank you to the publishers for allowing me early access to this book.

I find I'm intrigued more than wholly engaged .. the story line is cumulative rather than winding its way along a path. I'm sure I'm alone in this response given critical acclaim .. but what grabs me are the characterizations.. first of all Saul, the narrator and fulcrum of events. Breaking up with girl friend, travelling to old East Berlin to spread his father's ashes .. a tough old man who disapproved of saul. Closer up betrayals by the people he stays with while he researches the history, begin to transform the environment .. but that oddly significant and awry world already existed for him in UK with constant references to abbey road (and pineapple). In a way what drew me on was mystery of why the narrative is unfolding in this way. Saul's voice is gender fluid too.. for me anyway. So overall a strangely enticing read that I occasionally found tedious as it wandered on.

I found this book extremely hard to read. I felt it didn't really move forward with a narrative and I was unsure of exactly what was happening. At times I enjoyed it and wanted to like the book, but in the end I decided not to finish reading it as it just became such hard work.

In The Man Who Saw Everything, Deborah Levy was clearly going for abstract, fluid; a plot-structure that was as shifting and granular as the facets of human memory. It is an interesting concept, one that will surely attract many readers and catch the attention of some of the more highbrow literary prizes, but one that did not really work for me in its form of a novel.
This is primarily because, in order to make its central idea (and the second half of the book) work successfully, it seems that Levy tossed substance aside in her aim of making the overt style come into fruition. Traversing through its pages was almost like trying to follow discombobulated signposts, or crumbs scattered haphazardly by two children, or peeking behind the curtain and getting a good look at all of the strings.
The magic always disappears after that, you know? When you see all of the pieces moving but the final form just keeps moving out of your grasp.

Deborah Levy is an extremely clever author, and The Man Who Saw Everything is no exception. Although the time-bending, historically muddled narrative left me confused at times, it was entertaining trying to puzzle out what was actually going on. Add to that her stylishly sparse writing, a fascinating look at East Germany at the end of the 80s, and the sense of a highly controlled narrative technique, and it's a book I'm already looking forward to re-reading in future.

Warning: this review doesn't make sense.

It's 1988, and Saul Adler, a beautiful young man, is hit by a car as he crosses Abbey Road in London. He's largely unharmed.

Soon after, he breaks up with his photographer girlfriend, and then travels to study in communist East Berlin, just a few months before the wall comes down.

Yet nothing is what it seems. Saul slips back and forth in time, remembering strange scenes from his past and even predicting the future. There are strange events, symbols and riddles on every page, and a dreamlike atmosphere throughout.

Normally I'd get frustrated at this kind of stuff, but not this time because it's so easy to read, and hugely enjoyable in a mind bending kind of way.

What then, is The Man Who Saw Everything about? It's about so many things, including history, memory, identity, and loss. Oh, and there's a small mention of Brexit. Wait a minute, maybe it's only about Brexit. Who knows?

I haven't even begun to understand this wonderful book, and I need to reread it, but it's ok, because Deborah Levy is a magician and I love her. ❤

Twenty-eight year-old historian, Saul Adler has black hair and blue eyes; he is beautiful rather than handsome. It’s 1988 and he is on his way to meet his also beautiful girlfriend, art student Jennifer Moreau when he is hit by a car on the Abbey Road zebra crossing. He’s ok, though shaken with cuts and bruises. The car is driven by an elderly gentleman, Wolfgang. Jennifer takes Saul’s photograph, recreating the famous John Lennon Beatles’ pose crossing the road. Above her bed is a big photo of him.

Saul has a narcissistic personality. He believes himself to be in love with Jennifer and asks her to marry him. But she says no and ends their relationship. At the time of the Berlin Wall, Saul goes to East Berlin to research cultural opposition to the rise of fascism in the 1930s and is assigned a translator, Walter Müller. With whom he falls in love, also having a one night relationship with Walter’s sister, Luna. He is concerned about a fixer, Rainer, that he meets and gives money to, to enable Walter to come to the UK.

Moving forward to 2016 and 60-year old Saul wakes up in hospital, he no longer has his lovely head of hair, though he keeps trying to reach for it. Jennifer is by his side. She’s older, heavier and has silver hair. He has been hit by a car again on the Abbey Road zebra crossing, driven by Wolfgang and pieces of glass are in his head, he has damaged his spleen.

Saul has many visitors. His ward doctor is Rainer, though he denies it. He talks of Walter and his re-visit to him. He revisits history with Jennifer and all of the people who come and go at his bedside. Including his friend and lover, Jack.

I started this book, got a fifth of the way through and couldn’t understand it. So started it again. I did finish it and have given a précis of the story, but if you ask me for a deeper meaning, I’m not sure. I know that Saul is a narcissist. He’s bisexual in that he wants lovers. However, I think he really only has three loves - himself, Jennifer and Walter. He seems a sad, unhappy man with an unhappy family upbringing without his mother to protect him from his aggressive father and brother. I sort of understood the Stalin death reference and the matchbox and the psychology behind that.

I found it very sad about Isaac and Karl Thomas, that he had such little recollection.
I liked the part where he turned up to Jennifer’s photography exhibition.

The ending was gentle and signified death as he obviously did not walk again.

For some reason, I likened Saul Adler to Freddie Mercury (with his love of Mary Austin and ending his days with Jim Hutton).

I rate this book 2 stars 🌟🌟 because I just didn’t really get it, to the point that this isn’t even a review, it’s a précis!

The story of a man called Saul who is dumped by his cold heated beautiful girlfriend, gets run over on the famous zebra crossing in Abbey Road and goes to East Germany.
I thoroughly disliked the style of writing and the way the book got bogged down in boredom.
So much so I didn’t even get a quarter way through it.
This one was not for me.

An intriguing, haunting story that leaves you wanting to spend more time with the characters. For the full review go to https://joebloggshere.tumblr.com/post/187754838706/the-man-who-saw-everything-by-deborah-levy-an

It's 1988, and Saul Adler, a historian, is getting ready to travel to East Berlin to study when he is clipped by a car as he crosses the famous Abbey Road crosswalk for a photograph. Saul shrugs off the near miss but the incident becomes a catalyst for everything that follows in Saul's life - from the people he meets in Berlin, the connections he forges and the illness he suffers from 30 years later.

This is a book I went into not really knowing what to expect but preparing myself to not enjoy it. I think because I haven't had much luck with Man Booker Prize authors before, I was afraid Deborah Levy wouldn't be for me. But her writing, and her unfolding of Saul's narcissistic but utterly endearing character really spoke to me, and I truly loved this book.

I really found myself warming to Saul - from his beautiful looks to the almost tender way he seemed to go through life. He seemed strangely innocent in a lot of things, and he was the type of character you wanted to bring into your arms and protect from the world. His relationships with both Jennifer and Walter were both real and complex, and he seemed to really love yet it was never truly enough for anyone.

He had not censored his first thought when he'd touched me. His hands had been fluent in every language, his lips soft, his body hard."

It was really interesting as well to see Saul navigate East Berlin in 1988, a year away from the unification of Berlin, and still a totalitarian state in a way. It was so different from everything we know today, and it's so easy to forget that it wasn't actually that long ago that the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was split in this horrid way. Saul definitely does appear to really know the danger he is in and at all times, and we do see him and the people he loves suffer because his naivety eventually. But the brief look we got at East Berlin, was an intriguing one. I would have liked for more of the book to be focused on this time in Saul's life.

There's definitely a different feel to the second part in the book, set in 2016, and it can get quite confusing at times. It's hard to really know what Saul is thinking and what's real and not real, and what really happened. And as a reader, I began to question the story we had just read from 1988 as it appears some things didn't happen (the matchbox of his father's ashes for example). But even in this part, Saul was still Saul - and though he was older, fatter and not in his right mind, it was still very easy to love him.

There was something just really beautiful about this entire story and I loved been carried along with it.

This 2019 Man Booker longlisted novel has two distinct time frames for the main characters, Saul, Jennifer and Walter, 1988 and 2016. Lilkewise there are two distinct geographical settings, East Berlin and London. Saul is a bisexual historian; Jennifer and Walter, his two lovers, are a photographer and a translator. It is perhaps the interplay of these three forms, history, photography and translation, that are really at the core of what this book is about rather than a specific plot or character. History, photography and translation can all be interpreted and read in multiple ways. Where the forms take over from human interaction then there is only space for misunderstanding.
I enjoyed reading this book, particularly having visited East Berlin before the fall of the wall. However I was not gripped by either the writing or the characters and at times found myself questioning my own understanding of what was going on.

Thanks to the publishers via Net Galley for a complimentary ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Really loved this book, so exciting and great characters. Kept me guessing I would love to have not read it so I can read it again.

Historian Saul Adler is hit by a car on Abbey Road, before breaking up with his girlfriend and leaving for the GDR for two months, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The first half of the novel was confusing. The narrative looked clear and straightforward, but at the same time some details were off, I wasn't sure whether it was intentional or just fuzzy writing. There were many hints that there was more to discover beneath the surface, connections to be made, but the text didn't inspire me to actually do the work and dig in, I couldn't be bothered. Then in the second half, where the narrative actually got murkier, things started to clear up. Slowly all the odd bits in the first part started to make sense. I would advise myself to reread this novel. I don't have the time at the moment, but it would be a good idea. I trust that the brilliance will shine through brighter on a second reading.

One could probably write a whole essay about the title. The man who saw everything maybe didn't see much at all, or forgot what he saw. Observation and being observed are themes that always lurk about like a Stasi agent hiding in the attic.

The 2019 Man Booker Shortlist has been announced, and it contains none of the long-listed books I’ve actually read. Still, while a bout of summer flu prevented me from posting this before the nominations were narrowed down, I do want to share my thoughts on the quarter (more or less) of the books originally in contention.
Frankly, it would be a surprise were Deborah Levy not to be nominated for her latest novel. Her books are cool, short, intelligent and highly lauded. This felt like an interesting departure from previous works of hers that I’ve read, in that it covers a complicatedly split timeline rather than honing in on one significant event. Or maybe it is really all about one event after all, because in it our hero experiences and remembers a single critical visit to 1988 East Berlin. At the time, he is a self-absorbed and stunningly beautiful young man, it is only when we encounter him old and in hospital decades later, remembering and reliving the same traumatic events, that we see the impact of this brief trip. It’s an interesting, complex novel that is sure to strike a chord with fans of Levy’s earlier work as well as possibly finding her some new admirers.

Deborah Levy’s fiction is unfailingly interesting, taking the novel to new places. The Man Who Saw Everything is a really enjoyable read, and one that shifts the reality of what you think you’re reading, where you think you are in time and space. Puzzling, intriguing and well crafted.

A sensation story of Saul and his journey between times and contexts. This novel will transform your thinking with every turn of the page. A fascinating narrative.

Originally I rated this two stars, but to be honest, my struggle with The Man Who Saw Everything was more down to my failings than Deborah Levy's. I just did not get it—but admittedly I could almost feel it flying way over my head, practically rustling the tips of my hair. There are probably some profound insights into European political structures, relationships, and Levy's bending of time in there somewhere—but I just couldn't quite grasp them. I found the prose, while pared-down and clear-cut, a little bit too remote to properly get inside Saul's head, and the reoccurring motifs and jiggled-around plot just left me confused.

Levy's new book was brilliant. It definitely deserves its slot on the Man Booker prize.

It explores two different times between the year before the fall of Berlin Wall (1988) and 2016, post Brexit England. What I love about Levy is although her writing is sublime, it's still very accessible. It's very imaginative. She drops very creative ideas effortlessly into the story that makes you wow.

I really enjoyed this book, would recommend her anytime.

Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.