Tim Parks

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...

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...

A New York Times Notable Book: 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 an Italian condominium bubbling with Italian life around him, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers...

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...

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,...

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:...

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...

"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...