Silk

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Alessandro Baricco. Silk

Selected works in translation by Alessandro Baricco

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Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958. He is the author of thirteen novels, as well as a number of essay and short story collections, a modern rendition of The Iliad and a theatrical monologue. He has won the Prix Médicis Étranger in France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy. Ann Goldstein is a frequent translator from the Italian. She has translated works by, among others, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alessandro Baricco, Elena Ferrante, Erri De Luca and Roberto Calasso.

ALTHOUGH his father had imagined for him a brilliant future in the army, Hervé Joncour ended up earning his living in an unusual profession that, with singular irony, had a feature so sweet as to betray a vaguely feminine intonation.

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Five years later Lavilledieu had seven silk mills and had become one of the principal centres in Europe for breeding silkworms and making silk. It wasn’t all Baldabiou’s property. Other prominent men and landowners in the area had followed him in that curious entrepreneurial adventure. To each one, Baldabiou had revealed, without hesitation, the secrets of the work. This amused him much more than making piles of money. Teaching. And having secrets to tell. He was a man made like that.

‘Look harder.’

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