Tim Parks is the author of fourteen novels, including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, Sex Is Forbidden and, most recently, Painting Death, all of them translated into many languages. As well as being a novelist and the author of several works of non-fiction, Tim is the acclaimed translator of books by Moravia, Calvino, Machiavelli and other Italian writers. He’s a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His last book, Italian Ways was published by Harvill Secker.
There are many ways of touring the land that Italians, following Dante, call il bel paese, and Parks is as perceptive a guide as could be wished. – TLS