Silk - Hardcover

Baricco, Alessandro

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860462588 ISBN 13: 9781860462580

Publisher: The Harvill Press, 1997

Synopsis

When an epidemic threatens to destroy the silk trade in France, the young merchant Herve Joncour leaves his doting wife and his comfortable home in the small town of Lavilledieu and travels across Siberia to the other end of the world, to Japan, to obtain eggs for a fresh breeding of silk worms. It is the 1860s; Japan is closed to foreigners and this has to be a clandestine operation. During his undercover negotiations with the local baron, Joncour's attention is arrested by the man's concubine, a girl who does not have Oriental eyes. Although the young Frenchman and the girl are unable to exchange so much as a word, love blossoms between them, conveyed by a number of recondite messages in the course of four visits the Frenchman pays to Japan. How their secret affair develops and how it unfolds is told in a narration as beautiful, smooth and seamless as a piece of the finest silk.

About this title

Review:

‘A haunting and delicately erotic novella’ -- Mail on Sunday

‘A heart-breaking love story told in the form of a classic fable... A literary gem of bewitching power’ -- Sunday Times

‘An intensely powerful and perceptive drama of the deepest human desires...One of the most astonishing and moving novels I have ever read’ -- Daily Telegraph

‘Silk is the perfect pick-up book...A book of startling images and ideas’ -- Observer

Book Description:

'Deeply moving-A delicately crafted love story and an anatomy of desire' Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: The Harvill Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1860462588
• ISBN 13: 9781860462580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96