Brilliant, probing, and provocative reflections from the author of the bestselling Italian Neighborsand An Italian Education.In Adultery and Other Diversions, Tim Parks seeks, as he puts it, to "dramatize the intimate relation between reflections that are timeless and the ongoing story of our lives." He succeeds magnificently. Whether his focus is adultery, marriage, his relationship with his father, ghosts, his children, Italian soccer mania, or his work as a renowned writer and translator, Parks writes with astonishing clarity and intensity. He is one of a handful of writers who can capture...

Julia has left home. She has gone to Italy. She has left her lover, her job, her flat, the closely-knit group of friends who meant so much to her. Why? And the motley group of ex-pats she finds in Verona, the Oxbridge brigade, the revolutionary Scot, the cool Canadian, the feminist Flossy - why do they find it so impossible to return home, as if their very identities depend somehow on this thousand-mile displacement? Centred around a love story full of twists, turns and revelations, Home Thoughts explores a world of lost directions, wavering commitments and misplaced ambitions as Julia's...

George Crawley has finally got his life running along satisfyingly straight lines. Having made a success of his career and saved his faltering marriage, he is secure in the belief that he is master of his own destiny. Then comes the tragic blow - fate presents him with an apparently insoluble problem. Except that the word 'insoluble' just isn't part of the man's vocabulary. George will stop at nothing, nothing, to get his life back on the rails again.

An English geologist working on a Mediterranean island becomes embroiled in a nightmare web of deceit, corruption, lust and tragedy in Tim Parks' mesmeric story of a man whose life will be shattered like the fatal fragment of stone that obsesses him.

A thrilling comedy, as dark as it is farcical.
Morris can't get over Mimi. But then he should have thought of that before he murdered her and married her sister. Now Mimi's back, as a ghost, and she seems to be suggesting the way to redemption for Morris. He must help the poor immigrants of Verona; but if anybody should get in his charitable way then so much the worse for them."

In Hell and Back, Tim Parks reminds us just how exciting the essay form can be - turning his attention to classic authors like Dante, Borges and Leopardi, as well as various contemporary writers including Vikram Seth, W.G. Sebald and Salman Rushdie.

Raymond is mad, clever, manipulative and totally out of his parents' control. The other children are lying low, though still inextricably attached to their father's purse-strings. Amidst hilarious misunderstandings and poignant inadequacies, six well-meaning people relentlessly engineer their own and their loved ones' downfall.

Tight and disturbing, Loving Roger begins with a dead body and a chilling question. Why has nice, ordinary, affectionate Anna picked up her kitchen knife and murdered the man she insists she loves?...This brief novel is a mordantly illuminating essay on the way love contains the seeds of vindictiveness and hatred" Observer.

An Englishman, married to an Italian, is informed of the suicide of his son. He decides to leave his wife of 30 years standing in this exploration of marriage and destiny, whilst treading a narrow line between sanity and psychosis.

This is a clever, entertaining book, rare in travel literature, it is charged with a sense of purpose.