‘Sublime’ - New York Times
Order in the UK: Amazon, Blackwells, exclusive independent bookshop edition, Foyles, Waterstones (signed)
Comprare in Italia: Amazon, Il Saggiatore 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.
Events: here
Essays: Guardian: Pasolini - a warning from history, Financial Times: Danilo Donati, the secret magician of Italian cinema, Harpers Bazaar Italia: Giallo Italiano, Frieze: Ideal Syllabus, Vogue: Olivia Laing’s Rome, LitHub: The Power of Illusion
Interviews: Irish Times, The Nerve, Publishers Weekly, A Rabbit’s Foot, Another Magazine, LitHub
Extracts: Bomb, Harper’s Magazine
Listen: Hatchard’s podcast
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: German, Spanish, Ukrainian
‘Sublime… where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking… [Laing’s} unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to vivid life, making the work of Pasolini and Fellini feel fresh, daring and urgent.’ New York Times
‘You do not need to be an expert on postwar Italian cinema or politics (or to know the true crime story unfolding here) to savour this novel. Laing describes the filming in dazzling clarity. 1970s Rome swaggers from the page.’ Times
‘Unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic… Laing’s strength as a biographer and historian makes The Silver Book sing on a deeper level; their lush, beautiful prose is backed by meticulous research... In our own era of rising fascism, of increasing violence and conservatism, Laing’s novel feels eerily timely.’ Art in America
‘a technical tour de force… prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sentence after sentence of unforced lucidity’ Times Literary Supplement
‘A beautiful, terrifying, wonderful work of fiction’ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
‘Laing’s vibrant depiction of both real and imagined events is a prescient exploration of the meaning of art in dangerous places.’ Washington Post
‘A transportive, hot-blooded book, flooded by Roman light, sticky heat, and scooter exhaust—and a potent tribute to the fierce, uncompromising vision of Pasolini, whose dark warnings have come home to roost fifty years later.’ AnOther Magazine
‘Anyone familiar with Laing's exquisite nonfiction work… will be unsurprised by the unforced lyricism of their latest novel, a shimmering work that is part love story, part thriller… Essentially, it’s a cautionary tale against fascism.’ Booklist
‘A mesmerizing, contemplative, and haunting work of historical fiction’ – Kirkus Review
‘Erotic and compelling, Laing’s novel offers an intoxicating look at the people, emotions and exquisite but often bitter details behind the dream-making machinery of Italian cinema.’ BookPage
‘One of the most incisive literary voices working today, Laing writes about art, sex, identity, alienation, politics, and the environment… [This] dazzling novel, which seamlessly mixes real life figures and fictional characters… spotlights queer life in ’70s Italy and considers the sacrifices that artists make in pursuit of their vision’ - Publishers Weekly
‘Entrancing... a shimmering elegy for these filmmakers and a revolutionary era in cinematic history’ - Air Mail
‘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
‘An enchanted tale of an accursed era’ – Lucy Sante
‘Mercurial, voluptuous, and knowing, Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book is at once a portrait of Rome at a volatile moment, with la dolce vita turning sour and the dreaded ‘Years of Lead’ on the horizon, and a love-letter to 70s Italian cinema, with a tight focus on Pasolini, its elegiac heart. Vibrant on so many levels, from the intellectual to the carnal and the poetic, The Silver Book will have you in a trance from the first page to the last. How can the novel possibly be dead when Laing is writing as beautifully as this?’ – Rupert Thomson
‘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
‘This is a novel to fall in love with—a canny hustler of a novel, brilliant, obsessive, hot, and yet it is also like the light on the water at night in Venice… And it is the work of an artist at the height of their powers, as if I could admire Laing more.’ – Alexander Chee