Deborah Levy's New Book Explores Gertrude Stein's Defiant Life and Literary Legacy

Deborah Levy has authored a book titled 'My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein,' blending essay and fiction to examine the American writer and art collector. Levy, a British novelist shortlisted for the Booker Prize, spent a year in Paris tracing Stein's footsteps, describing her as a formidable intellectual who reinvented herself in early 20th-century Paris. Stein, born in 1874 in Pennsylvania to a wealthy German-Jewish family, abandoned medical studies to move to Paris, where she hosted avant-garde salons at 27 Rue de Fleurus with her brother Leo Stein. Her gatherings attracted figures like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, while she was photographed by Man Ray and Cecil Beaton and painted by Picasso. Levy notes Stein's experimental writing, including 'The Making of Americans'—considered the first novel of literary modernism, predating James Joyce's 'Ulysses'—though publishers initially rejected her work. Stein lived openly queer with her partner Alice B. Toklas, challenging gender norms of her time. Levy reflects on Stein's complex personality, her friendship with collaborator Bernard Faÿ during World War II, and the tension between her accessible autobiography and difficult prose. The book, published by Penguin-Verlag in London in 2026, will be available in German translation from July 15, 2026.