Tim Parks
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English
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"Why do we need fiction? Why do books need to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? Why should a group of aging Swedish men determine what "world" literature is best? Do books change anything? Did they use to? Do we read to challenge our vision of the world or to confirm it? Has novel writing turned into a job like any other? In Where I'm Reading From, the internationally acclaimed novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over a lifetime...
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English
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From the author of Italian Neighbors, this is another sparkling account of Italian society and culture-this time focusing on all the little things that turn an ordinary newborn infant into a true Italiano. When British-born Tim Parks heard a mother at the beach in Pescara shout to her son, "Alberto, don't sweat! No you can't go in the sea till eleven, it's still too cold, go and see your cousin in row 3 number 52," he was inspired to write about parenting...
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Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute, the Buddhist retreat where Beth Marriot has taken refuge, and that's a big advantage. Beth has been working as a server, assisting in the kitchen and helping out-discreetly, so the meditators aren't disturbed. The meditators are making big sacrifices to come here and change their lives. So the servers must observe the rules, and silence and separation of the sexes are chief among them. But Beth is fighting...
6) Rapids
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English
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A riveting white-water ride down a raging river in the Italian Alps, pitting people against Nature, in "the novel Tim Parks was born to write" (Sunday Telegraph, London). When 15 vacationers-six adults and nine adolescents-arrive in the Italian Alps to try their kayaking skills against the wild waters of the upper Aurino River, they have no idea what harrowing events await them. Among the group are the London banker Vince- recently widowed and trying...
7) Goodness
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English
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The prize-winning author of Europa and Tongue of Flame "explores the nature of goodness and moral faith in this poignant, witty, and disturbing novel" (Library Journal).
George Crawley knows a thing or two about being good. After watching his missionary father die in Africa and his selfless mother get taken advantage of back in England, he knows that being good is for chumps. Looking out for himself, George has established a great career and even...
8) Shear
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English
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In the hallucinatory light and heat of a Mediterranean island, London geologist Peter Nicholson arrives to inspect a granite quarry where a worker has died under suspicious circumstances. Hired to write as damning a report as possible, Peter brings his young mistress and pushes his wife and family to the back of his mind. But his blithe plans are disrupted by the arrival of the dead man's widow, hell-bent on revenge; a fax from his wife announcing...
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Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona and is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility. However, after the girl's mother-much...
10) Cleaver
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English
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Why would a man who has it all suddenly turn his back on the world at the height of his power? A celebrated journalist, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker, Harold Cleaver has just trounced the president in a damning television interview. But balancing Cleaver's success is the unbearable scrutiny of his elder son's equally damning roman à clef, Under His Shadow. Overweight and overwrought, Cleaver abruptly abandons his home, his wife, his mistresses,...
13) Mimi's ghost
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English
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Morris Duckworth can't get over Massimina, or Mimi, as he likes to refers to her. But then, he should have thought of that before he kidnapped and killed her. Only now, living in Verona and married to Mimi's sister, does he appreciate how much he misses her and how blindly he has stumbled into a trap of fate. Struggling to adjust to his good fortune, with a lavish house and cushy job, our unsavory hero finds that his new success is rife with tribulation:...
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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy.
Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account,...
Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account,...
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English
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Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football (which we Americans know as "soccer") a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? After twenty years in the bel paese, Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of his hometown soccer club, Hellas Verona, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities, and to get a fresh take on the conundrum that is national...
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Henry Dodge's trials and tribulations continue in The Best Laid Plans, but this time around the stakes are much higher! He struggles with the aftereffects of the Summer of 1985 and all that happened in Los Angeles with King George and his minions, including his childhood crush Danny, confessing to murder.
He attempts to stop the storm of memories with drugs, and soon enough becomes addicted to crystal meth, which is provided by his dealer Jeff,...
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English
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Already a highly successful lawyer, Daniel Savage has just been promoted to the position of Crown Court judge-though jealous colleagues whisper that his promotion might be due to the fact that he is black. He decides that it's finally time to settle down, forswear philandering, and rededicate himself to his family. His teenage children require a father's attention, and his career demands responsible behavior.
But this supposed pillar of society has...
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"Beloved guide to Italian culture and history Tim Parks traces Garibaldi's famous journey across the Apennines in search of the country's past and present. In the summer of 1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi, the legendary hero of guerrilla wars and future architect of a united Italy, was finally forced to concede defeat to the French in his defense of a revolutionary Roman republic. But determined to turn defeat into moral victory, he set out from Rome with...