The Silver Book

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, moving towards a shattering conclusion … rigorously researched and realised historical fiction – Patricia Nicol * The Times *
Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world … a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sentence after sentence of unforced lucidity … the author’s scene-setting is managed with deftness … a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force – Lucasta Miller * Times Literary Supplement *
Sublime … where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking … Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed … This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to vivid life, making the work of Pasolini and Fellini feel fresh, daring and urgent – Christopher Bollen * The New York Times *
Laing draws on the Italian director’s unsolved murder for their sumptuous second novel … A great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness … Laing has such a gift for capturing shimmering details – Olivia Ovenden * Observer *
The Silver Book, an absorbing amalgam of fact and fiction, exalts Salo as an admonitory horror masterwork of our times – Ian Thompson * New Statesman *
Set on surreal Italian film sets, this noir-tinged novel explores queer desire, creativity and dangerous secrets. Loosely based on real events, it captures the glamour and moral fog of the 1970s art world * i Paper, ‘Best Books to Read in November’ *
Laing’s writing is detailed to the point of being documentary, and much of this fascinating novel is about real-life people and the cinematic illusions they assembled by hand. But it has the urgency of fiction, pulsing with its characters’ deeply held desires and fears … “The film has opened a door on to the past, and something is moving, down there in the dark,” Danilo says to Nicholas. We can feel it too * Vulture, ‘The Best Books of 2025’ *
An arresting narrative about art, filmmaking, and desire in 1970s Italy … Shimmery and dreamlike, The Silver Book lives up to the promise of its name * Los Angeles Review of Books *
A transportive, hot-blooded book, flooded by Roman light, sticky heat, and scooter exhaust—and a potent tribute to the fierce, uncompromising vision of Pasolini, whose dark warnings have come home to roost fifty years later * AnOther Magazine *
Laing’s background as an arts writer, and their clear love of visual art, comes through in the language of beauty and pleasure that suffuses The Silver Book … The text is unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic, a delight to read … they have a gift for capturing the subtle fluctuations of yearning and desire … Laing’s strength as a biographer and historian makes The Silver Book sing on a deeper level; their lush, beautiful prose is backed by meticulous research … In our own era of rising fascism, of increasing violence and conservatism, Laing’s novel feels eerily timely – Emily Watlington * Art in America, ‘6 Books We’re Looking Forward to in November’ *

Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. They are the author of eight books, including:

• The Lonely City
• Everybody
• The Garden Against Time (Sunday Times number one bestseller)

Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2018, they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. They are an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts, and their books have been translated into twenty-one languages.

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