The Silver Book: A Novel

Art, power, desire, and illusion collide in a hypnotic new novel from Olivia Laing, set in the months leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975.

It is September 1974. Two men meet in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realizing the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young apprent...