Deborah Levy: Diary of a Steak

Referencing Freud, psychoanalysis, Jean-Martin Charcot, the English pride in madness and the herd mentality, Deborah Levy’s ‘Diary of a Steak’, is a witty take on the hysteria surrounding ‘Mad Cow Disease’ that is both highly amusing and deeply disturbing. Written in the form of the diary of a steak in a butcher’s shop, the narrative charts a progression into madness. Using typographical errors, omissions and forays into other languages, Deborah Levy describes a ‘mind that has been symbolically culled’.