“This is a novel to fall in love with—at least I did—a canny hustler of a novel, brilliant, obsessive, hot, and yet it is also like the light on the water at night in Venice. This is the kind of novel you steal from your spouse or vice versa. And it is the work of an artist at the height of their powers—as if I could admire Laing more.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book is an enchanted tale of an accursed era. Young Nicholas’s coming of age and romantic adventures are set against the violent period in 1970s Italy known as the Years of Lead. In spare, subjective prose, with a deep appreciation of craft, material, texture, color, Laing brilliantly evokes Cinecittà when its creative masters were at their peak: Federico Fellini, Danilo Donati, Pier Paolo Pasolini. The book manages to be both wonderfully escapist and a timely warning.” —Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name

“The Silver Book is an astounding work. It's difficult to believe this isn’t an eyewitness account: the characters appear to live and breathe in actual time and we experience with them all the erotic tensions, as well as the tragedies, involved in their defiant pursuit of beauty. The world of Fellini and Pasolini is uncannily resurrected in this visionary narrative.” —Celia Paul

“Like the script of an unwritten movie, voyeuristic, slick with 1970s decadence, glittering with shadows and unspoken sins, The Silver Book is lush, intense, wildly evocative; subtly freighted with emotional power and sensuality, it is simply [Laing’s] best book yet.” —Philip Hoare, author of William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love 

“By taking us on set during the filming of two of the strangest movies ever made, Olivia Laing’s new novel makes us wonder all over again at how facts can be turned into fiction, then back once again into glittering and suggestive fact. A love story dedicated to cinema, to queerness, and to the alchemy of all good art.” —Neil Bartlett, author of Address Book