Silk by Alessandro Baricco (Book Analysis) E-Book

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• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: BrightSummaries.com
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 15

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Unlock the more straightforward side of Silk with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Silk by Alessandro Baricco, which tells the story of Hervé Joncour, a French silkworm merchant during the 19th century. Following an epidemic which infects silkworm eggs across the world, he is forced to travel to Japan to continue his trade. He meets a woman there that fascinates him, and he returns numerous times to try and see her, desperate to discover her identity. Silk was an immediate bestseller in Italy, where it has sold over 300,000 copies to date. The novel has been translated into 27 languages, and has won admirers all over the world thanks to its compelling historical plot and delicate, poetic writing style. Alessandro Baricco is an Italian writer, composer and filmmaker. He has written a number of novels, is a contributor to the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and teaches at the Scuola Holden, a school of narrative techniques that he cofounded in 1993.

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Leseprobe

Alessandro Baricco

Italian writer, composer, producer and director

Born in Turin in 1958Notable works:Lands of Glass (1991), novelNovecento (1994), novelSilk (1996), novel

Alessandro Baricco is an Italian writer, composer, producer and director, and was born in Turin in 1958. His first novel, Land of Glass (published in Italian in 1991), received France’s Prix Médicis étranger in 1995. He published Novecento, a theatrical monologue, in 1994. Two years later, with Silk, he established himself as one of the major writers of the new generation. He currently contributes to the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and teaches at the Scuola Holden, a school of narrative techniques which he founded with his friends.

Silk

A love story shrouded in mystery

Genre: novelReference edition: Baricco, A. (2006) Silk. Trans. Goldstein, A. Edinburgh: Canongate.First edition: 1996Themes: silkworm farming, travel, Japan, mystery, love, nostalgia

Silk (Seta in Italian) is Alessandro Baricco’s third novel. When it was published in 1996 it became a bestseller in Italy, where it has sold over 300 000 copies to date. It has been translated into 27 languages and first appeared in English in 1997, with a second translation by Ann Goldstein published in 2006.

The story immerses the reader in the heart of the silkworm trade in the 19th century: following an epidemic which infects silkworms all over Europe, Hervé Joncour undertakes four journeys to Japan to buy healthy eggs and allow his village to continue in the silk trade. These journeys lead him towards a strange romantic destiny. Baricco gives us a work that is all silence, restraint and refinement, marked by a very distinctive writing style. The book is similar to the life of its hero: a “spectacle. Light and inexplicable” (p. 136).