Bedevilled by a crippling condition which nobody could explain or relieve, he confronts hard truths about the relationship between the mind and the body, the hectic modern world and his life as a writer. Teach Us To Sit Still is the visceral, thought-provoking and improbably entertaining story of Ti[...]

How does an Englishman cope when he moves to Italy - not the tourist idyll but the real Italy? This book presents an account of the idiosyncrasies and nuances of Italian culture.[...]

Beth Marriot is fighting demons: a catastrophic series of events has undermined all prospect of happiness. Trauma leaves her no alternative but to bury herself in the austere asceticism of a community that wakes at 4am, doesn't permit eye contact, let alone speech, and keeps men and women strictly s[...]

Tim Parks's books on Italy have been hailed as "so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways [...]

An American expatriate describes life in Verona, Italy, the collision between invading surburbia and the die-hard peasant tradition, the architecture, wine bottling, and the Veronese people. Reprint.[...]

Why do we need fiction? Why do books need to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? 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 novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over decades [...]

"Riveting . . . Parks' discoveries will fascinate not only writers but all citizens of an information age steeped in and propelled by language." "--The New Yorker "" Tim Parks'] prose is mordantly funny, self-conscious but never selfpitying, worldly but introspective, attuned to the needs of a soul [...]

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 c[...]

"The Prince" is the most controversial book about winning power - and holding on to it - ever written. Machiavelli's tough-minded, pragmatic argument that sometimes it is necessary to abandon ethics to succeed made his name notorious. Yet his book has been read by strategists, politicians and busine[...]

Morris Duckworth has a dark past. Having married and murdered his way into a wealthy Italian family he has long left aside the paperweight and the pillow to become a respected member of Veronese business life. But it's not enough.[...]

The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power is derived from the family bank. This book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank.[...]