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Born in Manchester, 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 is the author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona and Teach Us to Sit Still. He has won the Somerset Maugham, Betty Trask and Llewellyn Rhys awards, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lectures on literary translation in Milan, writes for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and his many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.
Imagine the worst anxiety dream you've ever had and raise it to the power ten, and you might get some idea of the relentless, claustrophobic experience of reading Tim Parks's novel. The characteristically mannered and disjunctive sentences introduce the reader both to the narrator of Destiny, the expatriate British expert on Italian affairs Christopher Burton, and to the precipitating event of this journey into his personal heart of darkness. But he is not alone. Everyone is very, very unhappy. Technically, this is a brilliant self-portrait of a charmless, self-aggrandizing obsessive going through a nightmare mid-life crisis. Parks seems to take an almost sadistic pleasure in tormenting his characters, and even the hint of deliverance at the very end is heavily qualified. Not for the faint-hearted. Review by Michael Dibdin, whose latest books include 'Blood Rain'. (Kirkus UK)
