Coming 6/11/25
Pre-order in the UK: Amazon, Blackwells, exclusive independent bookshop edition, Foyles, Waterstones (signed)
Pre-order in the US: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop
‘It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night…’
It is September 1974 and two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs.
He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.
The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema. It’s a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
Publicity: sam@sam-talbot.com
UK press & events: CDavies1@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk
US press: sarita.varma@fsgbooks.com
Foreign rights: margaret@pewliterary.com
Film rights: emily@theartistspartnership.com
Coming soon: Italian, German, Spanish, Ukrainian
‘Like the script of an unwritten movie, voyeuristic, slick with 1970s decadence, glittering with shadows and unspoken sins, Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book is lush, intense, wildly evocative; subtly freighted with emotional power and sensuality, it is simply their best book yet’ – Philip Hoare
‘Transporting, heartbreaking, beautiful. I did not want this story to end’ – Nigel Slater
‘The Silver Book is an astounding work. It’s difficult to believe this isn’t an eyewitness account: the characters appear to live and breathe in actual time, and we experience with them all the erotic tensions, as well as the tragedies, involved in their defiant pursuit of beauty. The world of Fellini and Pasolini is uncannily resurrected in this visionary narrative’ – Celia Paul
‘Such a haunting, sad but creatively thrilling tale told with delicate economy’ – Neil Tennant
‘By taking us on set during the filming of two of the strangest movies ever made, Olivia Laing’s new novel makes us wonder all over again at how facts can be turned into fiction, then back once again into glittering and suggestive fact. A love story dedicated to cinema, to queerness, and to the alchemy of all good art’ – Neil Bartlett