Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He has written nineteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, In Extremis and, most recently, Hotel Milano. For descriptions of all the novels, go to NOVELS.
During the nineties he wrote two, personal non-fiction accounts of life in northern Italy, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education, books that won acclaim and popularity for their anthropological wryness. These were complemented in 2002 by A Season with Verona, a grand overview of Italian life as seen through the business and passion of football, and Italian Ways, on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo.
Other non-fiction works include a history of the Medici bank in 15th century Florence, Medici Money, a memoir on health, illness and meditation, Teach Us to Sit Still, and an exploration of the nature of consciousness, Out of My Head, On the Trail of Consciousness. In 2020, he published Italian Life, a Modern Fable of Loyalty and Betrayal and in 2021 The Hero’s Way, Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna. For descriptions of all the non-fiction, go to NON-FICTION.
A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, his many essays are collected in Hell and Back, The Fighter, A Literary Tour of Italy, and Life and Work.
In recent years he has been publishing a series of blogs on writing, reading, translation and the like in the New York Review online. These have recently been collected in Where I am Reading From and Pen in Hand. For the complete list of publications, check the Bibliography.
Aside from his own writing, Tim has translated works by Moravia, Pavese, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leopardi; his book, Translating Style, which analyses Italian translations of the English modernists, is considered a classic in its field.