The Man Who Saw Everything

In Deborah Levy's "The Man Who Saw Everything," the enigmatic Saul Adler is at the center of a narrative that blurs the lines between memory, perception, and reality. The story opens in 1988, when Saul is struck by a car on Abbey Road, an event that seems to echo through his life. Carrying a photograph of this moment, he travels to East Berlin, a city caught between oppressive regimes and shifting ideologies. There, Saul becomes entangled with figures from both East and West, finding himself increasingly disoriented by the passage of time and haunted by the spectres of history. Levy masterfully weaves together disparate moments and perspectives, exploring themes of surveillance, sexual politics, and personal culpability within grand historical narratives. As Saul grapples with his own identity and the male gaze, the novel culminates in 2016, where he attempts to re-cross Abbey Road, forcing a confrontation with the past and the future he has unknowingly inhabited. This is a "time-bending, location-hopping tale of love, truth and the power of seeing."