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Tim Parks

    December 19, 1954

    Tim Parks is a British author celebrated for his incisive essays and novels. His work often delves into the complexities of modern life, the search for meaning, and interpersonal relationships, all rendered with a distinctive voice. Parks is known for his keen observational skills and penetrating psychological insights into his characters. His essays provide thoughtful reflections on the craft of writing, reading, and the art of translation. His writing invites readers to contemplate the world around them.

    The Prince
    A Literary Tour of Italy
    Juggling the Stars
    A season with Verona : travels around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals
    Sex Is Forbidden
    Adultery & Other Diversions
    • 2024

      The Best Laid Plans

      • 446 pages
      • 16 hours of reading

      Henry Dodge faces intensified challenges in this sequel, grappling with the repercussions of the tumultuous Summer of 1985 in Los Angeles. As he navigates the aftermath of his encounters with King George and his crew, he confronts shocking revelations, including a confession of murder from his childhood crush, Danny. The stakes are raised as Henry must deal with the emotional and moral complexities that arise from these events.

      The Best Laid Plans
    • 2024

      The Jungle Entrepreneurs

      • 232 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      Allen and Franco are two young entrepreneurs coasting their last year of Business School in New York. Feeling drained and uninspired by the pressures of success, they take on an expected journey to the jungle of Costa Rica, where they will do what they can to make a business out of an old, abandoned property, submerged in local rumors. Once surrounded by the power of the place, they unravel an unexpected family history, which will take them on a wild and spiritual inner journey. The struggles of arduous work and lack of resources will shape these men's partnership, new friendships, and the way they each understand their lives. In this intimate tale, N.V. Parks takes us on a unique spiritual journey, a rite of healing and transformation into adulthood, unraveling a new meaning of happiness and success, while soaking in the magnificent beauty of Ostional Wildlife Refuge.

      The Jungle Entrepreneurs
    • 2024

      Following the critical and commercial success of A Literary Tour of Italy, acclaimed novelist Tim Parks presents a new selection of his latest essays on Italian literature, offering a lively, accessible and stimulating diorama of the cultural landscape of Italy.

      Another Literary Tour of Italy
    • 2023

      From the bestselling, Booker-shortlisted chronicler of Italy, a classic novel about a man's emotional reckoning in a changed world far from home Frank's reclusive existence in a leafy part of London is shattered when he is summoned to Milan for the funeral of an old friend. Preoccupied by this sudden intrusion of his past, he flies, oblivious, into the epicentre of a crisis he has barely registered on the news. It is spring, his luxury hotel offers every imaginable comfort; perhaps he will be able to weather the situation and return home unscathed? What Frank doesn't know is that he's about to make a discovery that will change his heart and his mind. Hotel Milano is a universal story from a unique moment in recent history: a book about the kindness of strangers, and about a complicated man who, faced with the possibility of saving a life, must also take stock of his own.

      Hotel Milano
    • 2021

      The acclaimed author of Italian Ways returns with an exploration into Italy’s past and present—following in the footsteps of Garibaldi’s famed 250-mile journey across the Apennines. In the summer of 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy’s legendary revolutionary, was finally forced to abandon his defense of Rome. He and his men had held the besieged city for four long months, but now it was clear that only surrender would prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a huge French army. Against all odds, Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory. On the evening of July 2, riding alongside his pregnant wife, Anita, he led 4,000 hastily assembled men to continue the struggle for national independence elsewhere. Hounded by both French and Austrian armies, the garibaldini marched hundreds of miles across the Appenines, Italy’s mountainous spine, and after two months of skirmishes and adventures arrived in Ravenna with just 250 survivors. Best-selling author Tim Parks, together with his partner Eleonora, set out in the blazing summer of 2019 to follow Garibaldi and Anita’s arduous journey through the heart of Italy. In The Hero’s Way he delivers a superb travelogue that captures Garibaldi’s determination, creativity, reckless courage, and profound belief. And he provides a fascinating portrait of Italy then and now, filled with unforgettable observations of Italian life and landscape, politics, and people.

      The Hero's Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna
    • 2021

      Bestselling author of Italian Ways Tim Parks follows the hair-raising journey of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, 250-miles on foot from Rome to Ravenna, to explore Italy's past and present.0In the summer of 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy's legendary revolutionary hero, was finally forced to abandon his defence of Rome. He and his men had held the besieged city for three long months, but now it was clear that only surrender would prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a much superior French army. 0Against all odds, Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory. On the evening of 2 July, riding alongside his pregnant wife Anita, he led 4,000 hastily assembled volunteers out of the city to continue the struggle for national independence in the countryside. Hounded by both French and Austrian armies, the garibaldini marched hundreds of miles through Umbria and Tuscany, then across the Appenines, Italy's mountainous spine, until, after thirty-two exhausting days of skirmishes and adventures, 250 survivors boarded fishing boats on the Adriatic coast in an ill-fated attempt to reach the independent Republic of Venice.0 It would be ten years and much world-wandering before Garibaldi would astonish the world when his revolutionary campaign in Sicily became the catalyst to the unification of Italy. This is the lesser-known story, brought vividly to life by bestselling author Tim Parks, who in the blazing summer of 2019, together with his partner Eleonora, followed Garibaldi and Anita's arduous journey. The Hero's Way is a fascinating portrait of Italy past and present, and a celebration of determination, creativity, desperate courage and profound belief

      The Hero's Way
    • 2020

      The long-awaited new book on 'how Italy really works' from the bestselling writer on Italian culture. Forty years ago, Tim Parks made the bel paese his home. Italian Life is his reckoning with his adopted country, an attempt to get to the core of it, to make sense of it, to fold others' stories in with his own experience - now that he is, in his own words, 'to some degree Italian' himself. The result is an arresting, on-the-ground account of 21st century Italy told through the eyes of a rich cast of characters, among them students from poverty-stricken Basilicata trying to start new lives in the wealthy gloom of Milan, a priest, a poet, a young professor from Padua, and an Englishman who refuses to toe the line. At the book's centre is a story of corruption and power. But it is also a celebration of culture and history, fact and fable, sacred and secular, ancient and modern: a thought-provoking, surprising, entertaining and even definitive account of how Italy actually happens.

      Italian Life
    • 2019

      Pen in Hand

      • 320 pages
      • 12 hours of reading

      After delighting us with his novels and many volumes of non-fiction, Tim Parks - who is not only an acclaimed author and a translator, but also a celebrated literary essayist - gives us a book to enjoy, savour and, most importantly, reread.

      Pen in Hand
    • 2019

      In a distant but recognizable future, a young girl from Earth One, Rella Deveraux-Pensword, is called upon to protect and defend Hleo: an enchanted refuge for children who need protection and healing. Rella must stop Archimago (the shape-shifting story thief) and his menacing miscreations, The Shadowsplitters, from destroying The Wondercurrent.

      The Wondercurrent
    • 2019

      Adventures in cutting-edge ideas about consciousness, from bestselling non-fiction writer Tim Parks. Hardly a day goes by without some discussion about whether computers can be conscious, whether our universe is some kind of simulation, whether mind is a unique quality of human beings or spread out across the universe like butter on bread. Most philosophers believe that our experience is locked inside our skulls, an unreliable representation of a quite different reality outside. Colour, smell and sound, they tell us, occur only in our heads. Yet when neuroscientists look inside our brains to see what's going on, they find only billions of neurons exchanging electrical impulses and releasing chemical substances. Five years ago, in a chance conversation, Tim Parks came across a radical new theory of consciousness that undercut this interpretation. This set him off on a quest to discover more about this fascinating topic and also led him to observe his own experience with immense attention. Out of My Head tells the gripping, highly personal, often surprisingly funny, story of Tim Parks' quest to discover more about this fascinating topic. It frames complex metaphysical considerations and technical laboratory experiments in terms we can all understand. Above all, it invites us to see space, time, colour and smell, sounds and sensations in an entirely new way. The world will feel more real after reading it.

      Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness