by Alessandro Baricco (Author), Ann Goldstein (Translator)
The year is 1861. Herv Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who combs the known world for their gemlike eggs. Then circumstances compel him to travel farther, beyond the edge of the known, to a country legendary for the quality of its silk and its hostility to foreigners: Japan.There Joncour meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But in the moment he does, Joncour is possessed.
Author Biography
Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958. He is the author of two previous novels, Castelli di rabbia, which won the Prix Médicis in France and the Selezione Campiello prize in Italy, and Ocean-Sea, which won the Viareggio and Palazzo del Bosco prizes. He has also written essays in the field of musicology. Silk became an immediate bestseller in Italy and has been translated into twenty-seven languages.