Deborah Levy

The award-winning writer Deborah Levy speaks to Take Four Books about her latest novel, My Year In Paris With Gertrude Stein, and, together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its three key literary influences.

The new book follows three female friends in Paris. There's Eva an artist in a long-distance marriage, Fanny, a sexually adventurous financier, and making up the trio, is our unnamed narrator, who is attempting to write an essay about the avant-garde American poet and art collector, Gertrude Stein. The three friends cook, walk, argue and attempt to find a lost cat.

Deborah's three choices in this episode are: Virginia Woolf's fifth novel To The Lighthouse from 1927; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, from 1961; and the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou which was published in 1978.

Producer: Dominic Howell
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.