the exchange-rate between love and money
‘Part love story, part hilarious political send-up, Leveritt’s debut is hectic, intense and verbally dazzling’ The Guardian
Love story, tone poem, and seething meditation on history and politics, this début novel begins with a love triangle involving a Swiss beauty investigating Serbian atrocities and a pair of postcollegiate hustlers—best friends from London who have come to Sarajevo for the “killings” to be made from “Dayton money.” The story quickly opens into a kaleidoscopic exploration of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s postwar chaos via the intersecting lives of a motley group of Westerners working for N.G.O.s and the like. By turns exuberant, furious, bawdy, and mournful, the book shifts between big-picture history and the idiosyncratic passions of its players. As in classic Pynchon, Looney Tunes antics—such as a quest to prove that a mystical property in Sarajevo’s local beer supply allowed the city to survive its traumatic siege—illuminate larger truths. The New Yorker
'a tumult of avarice and violence and romance: at once brutal, crazed and hilarious. Leveritt’s command of language and narrative makes this a highly promising debut novel’ New Statesman
'the tableau has a scruffy glamour, and the narrative a manic momentum, studded with clever lines' The New York Times
‘a modern version of Burrough’s Interzone, a new Tangiers where everything is permitted to a busy and self-regarding clique of Western do-gooders… Leveritt is adept at capturing the strange atmosphere of post-war Sarajevo’ The Indepedent
‘For all that, The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money is never just cynical or destructive. There are important issues at stake here, and Leveritt lets these come ever more to the fore over the futile fumblings of jaded ex-pats. Why Sarajevo never fell. Why the West never came, until it was nearly too late. The author’s descriptions of the city with its distinctive ‘Serbian flowers’, the shell holes originally painted red, but now faded, are brilliant. He attributes the survival of the city to ‘Sarajevo beer’, the elixir that not only made the defenders invincible but sustained their broadly tolerant outlook throughout the siege. The novel is thus a beguiling blend of thirtysomething angst, political polemic, lyrical description and, towards the end, boy’s own adventure’ Daily Telegraph
'a sly romance' Daily Mail
‘radiates a certain clued-up, slacker intelligence that charms and infuriates in equal measure; his sentences are invariably a chaotic combination of wisecracking irony, effortless confidence and a casual, almost lazy, informality… you wish he’d rein in his precocious talent.’ Metro
'the biting wit of Kurt Vonnegut and the passion of Denis Johnson’
'a tumult of avarice and violence and romance: at once brutal, crazed and hilarious. Leveritt’s command of language and narrative makes this a highly promising debut novel’ New Statesman
'the tableau has a scruffy glamour, and the narrative a manic momentum, studded with clever lines' The New York Times
‘a modern version of Burrough’s Interzone, a new Tangiers where everything is permitted to a busy and self-regarding clique of Western do-gooders… Leveritt is adept at capturing the strange atmosphere of post-war Sarajevo’ The Indepedent
‘For all that, The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money is never just cynical or destructive. There are important issues at stake here, and Leveritt lets these come ever more to the fore over the futile fumblings of jaded ex-pats. Why Sarajevo never fell. Why the West never came, until it was nearly too late. The author’s descriptions of the city with its distinctive ‘Serbian flowers’, the shell holes originally painted red, but now faded, are brilliant. He attributes the survival of the city to ‘Sarajevo beer’, the elixir that not only made the defenders invincible but sustained their broadly tolerant outlook throughout the siege. The novel is thus a beguiling blend of thirtysomething angst, political polemic, lyrical description and, towards the end, boy’s own adventure’ Daily Telegraph
'a sly romance' Daily Mail
‘radiates a certain clued-up, slacker intelligence that charms and infuriates in equal measure; his sentences are invariably a chaotic combination of wisecracking irony, effortless confidence and a casual, almost lazy, informality… you wish he’d rein in his precocious talent.’ Metro
'the biting wit of Kurt Vonnegut and the passion of Denis Johnson’
Texas Monthly Review
'A raucous debut novel of sex and politics set in postwar but still chaotic Sarajevo in the early 21st century. Leveritt manages a difficult balancing act, using a rollicking and sometimes bawdy tone to examine serious issues of power politics, and he does it brilliantly.'
'A raucous debut novel of sex and politics set in postwar but still chaotic Sarajevo in the early 21st century. Leveritt manages a difficult balancing act, using a rollicking and sometimes bawdy tone to examine serious issues of power politics, and he does it brilliantly.'
