The stories in Deborah Levy’s Black Vodka are united by the theme of unconventional love. The profound tales in Stephen Grosz’s The Examined Life are drawn from his day-to-day practice as a psychoanalyst. Both books contain characters caught between openness and concealment. They discuss different ways of telling stories – fictional and real – and whether there is an absolute distinction between the two. Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Stephen Grosz has worked as a psychoanalyst for twenty five years. Hephzibah Anderson is a book columnist for Bloomberg News and the author of Chastened.

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