The Silver Book
Publisher,Hamish Hamilton UK
Publication Date,
Format, Paperback
Weight,
No. of Pages, 288
Shelf: FICTION / ADULT FICTION / GENERAL FICTION
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Set in the dream factory of cinema, The Silver Book is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
It is September 1974. 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, and this artist is the apprentice 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, they 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.
