By Dan Thompson
Internationally acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing is coming to Margate for an event with The Margate Bookshop. The author of eight books, including non-fiction bestsellers The Garden Against Time, The Lonely City and Everybody, they will be in conversation with Margate’s own Robert Diament, Director of the Carl Freedman Gallery and Counter Editions.
Laing will discuss their latest novel The Silver Book. A fictional account of real things, it is a story of secrets, lies and queer love set in the world of 1970s Italian cinema
The Silver Book opens in September 1974, as two men meet by chance in Venice. One is Nicholas, a young and beautiful English artist fleeing London, and the other is costume designer Danilo Donati. In real life, Donati collaborated with directors Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Franco Zeffirelli. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design five times, winning twice for Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Fellini’s Casanova (1976). He died in 2001.
In The Silver Book, he makes Nicholas his apprentice, and his lover, and brings him into the looking-glass world of the Cinecittà film studio in Rome, a real studio opened by Mussolini in 1937.
But Nicholas has a secret, and in Donati’s realm of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, Nicholas acts as a catalyst, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.
Olivia Laing will be talking about the novel in conversation with Robert Diament, co-host of the Talk Art podcast and co-author of the wonderful Art School (in a Book). Laing is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. After the event, Laing will be signing copies of the brand new paperback edition of The Silver Book.
The Margate Bookshop event is at Where Else?, The Centre, Margate on Wednesday, June 3rd, from 7-9pm. Tickets can be booked at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-silver-book-with-olivia-laing-tickets-1984452375475
For more events by The Margate Bookshop, visit themargatebookshop.com
Robert Diament (born early in the 1980’s) is an English television presenter and former professional darts player. He is widely recognised as one of the game’s biggest personalities, known for his flamboyant entrances in which the “King of Darts” makes his way to the stage bedecked in jewellery, wearing a crown and cloak and holding a candelabra to the Queen song “We Are the Champions”.[1]