Olivia Laing

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, moving towards a shattering conclusion . . . rigorously researched and realised historical fiction

Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sentence after sentence of unforced lucidity . . . the author’s scene-setting is managed with deftness . . . a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force

Sublime . . . where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking . . . Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed . . . This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to vivid life, making the work of Pasolini and Fellini feel fresh, daring and urgent

Laing draws on the Italian director’s unsolved murder for their sumptuous second novel . . . A great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness . . . Laing has such a gift for capturing shimmering details

The Silver Book, an absorbing amalgam of fact and fiction, exalts Salo as an admonitory horror masterwork of our times

Set on surreal Italian film sets, this noir-tinged novel explores queer desire, creativity and dangerous secrets. Loosely based on real events, it captures the glamour and moral fog of the 1970s art world

i Paper, 'Best Books to Read in November'

An arresting narrative about art, filmmaking, and desire in 1970s Italy . . . Shimmery and dreamlike, The Silver Book lives up to the promise of its name

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

Laing’s background as an arts writer, and their clear love of visual art, comes through in the language of beauty and pleasure that suffuses The Silver Book . . . The text is unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic, a delight to read . . . they have a gift for capturing the subtle fluctuations of yearning and desire . . . 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, '6 Books We’re Looking Forward to in November'

Erotic romance, moviemaking audacity, and looming dread co-exist in this arresting fact-based novel set in Italy’s hazardous 1970s. A mesmerizing, contemplative, and haunting work of historical fiction

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 . . . [The Silver Book] is very readable: think Thomas Mann’s classic novella, Death in Venice, and Nicolas Roeg’s exquisite film, Don’t Look Now, but with a queer twist. Essentially, it’s a cautionary tale against fascism

Rarely have the personalities and particularities of the silver screen landed such a starring role as they do in Olivia Laing’s new novel . . . The Silver Book is clearly well-researched and replete with details about Fellini, Pasolini, Donati, and the making of these films

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. Along the way, [Laing] celebrate[s] human ingenuity and the process of making things from scratch

Laing’s prose is sleek and gratifying, purring with sateen grace

The gripping novel is a love letter to cinema and also a thriller set among some of its most important and mysterious real-life characters . . . 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

The Silver Book possesses a tangle of compelling themes. It is about the magic of twentieth century Italian cinema and the marvelously bohemian cast of characters at its heart. Or, it’s about gay lovers who surprise themselves by finding in each other a long-delayed, but deeply genuine, feeling of intimacy. Or, cultivated from the details of the first two, it’s about the way fascism, like a weed, never seems to totally die once it takes hold of a country . . . The deft plotting in Laing’s novel keeps readers engaged in not only the personal lives of the characters, but also in the larger political questions the story persistently stirs up . . . [It's] a beautiful, terrifying, wonderful work of fiction

Dazzling . . . spotlights queer life in ’70s Italy and considers the sacrifices that artists make in pursuit of their vision . . . Set during Italy’s tumultuous Years of Lead, [The Silver Book] couldn’t be timelier. And yet what Laing captures best is the texture of the times: the world changing at a fast pace and big scale while people are having sex and making things as if compulsively. Pleasure and peril here punctuate the everyday

The latest from the The Garden Against Time author follows an English artist, Nicholas, who is swept up into the world of Italian cinema by Danilo Donati, the designer behind the spectacular visions of directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. But in a world of constant illusion, Nicholas’ secret goes under the radar as he gets to work on two surreal film sets, until he sets in motion a tragedy he did not intend in this suspenseful queer love story and noirish thriller based on real events

Laing's writing roams a Venn diagram of memoir, art criticism, history and fiction

Entrancing . . . a shimmering elegy for these filmmakers and a revolutionary era in cinematic history

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

Like the script of an unwritten movie, voyeuristic, slick with 1970s decadence, glittering with shadows and unspoken sins, The Silver Book is lush, intense, wildly evocative; subtly freighted with emotional power and sensuality, it is simply their best book yet

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

Transporting, heartbreaking, beautiful. I did not want this story to end

An enchanted tale of an accursed era . . . In spare, subjective prose, with a deep appreciation of craft, material, texture, color, Laing brilliantly evokes Cinecittà when its creative masters were at their peak . . . The book manages to be both wonderfully escapist and a timely warning

This is a novel to fall in love with—at least I did—a canny hustler of a novel, brilliant, obsessive, hot, and yet it is also like the light on the water at night in Venice. This is the kind of novel you steal from your spouse or vice versa. And it is the work of an artist at the height of their powers, as if I could admire Laing more

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

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?

Such a haunting, sad but creatively thrilling tale, told with delicate economy

An enthralling read. So many exquisite images conjured and a driving sense of political and emotional passion. I loved it

‘It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night.’ 
 
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. 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.

Olivia Laing

Praise for The Silver Book

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, movi ...

Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sente ...

Sublime . . . where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking . . . Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed . . . This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to ...

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, movi ...

Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sente ...

Sublime . . . where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking . . . Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed . . . This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to ...

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, movi ...

Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sente ...

Sublime . . . where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking . . . Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed . . . This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to ...

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