The Silver Book

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, moving towards a shattering conclusion … rigorously researched and realised historical fiction – Patricia Nicol * The Times *Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world … a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sentence after sentence of unforced lucidity … the author’s scene-setting is managed with deftness … a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force – Lucasta Miller * Times Literary Supplement *Sublime … where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking … Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed … This unsentimental style brings the 1970s Italian cinema scene to vivid life, making the work of Pasolini and Fellini feel fresh, daring and urgent – Christopher Bollen * The New York Times *Laing draws on the Italian director’s unsolved murder for their sumptuous second novel … A great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness … Laing has such a gift for capturing shimmering details – Olivia Ovenden * Observer *The Silver Book, an absorbing amalgam of fact and fiction, exalts Salo as an admonitory horror masterwork of our times – Ian Thompson * New Statesman *Set on surreal Italian film sets, this noir-tinged novel explores queer desire, creativity and dangerous secrets. Loosely based on real events, it captures the glamour and moral fog of the 1970s art world * i Paper, ‘Best Books to Read in November’ *Laing’s writing is detailed to the point of being documentary, and much of this fascinating novel is about real-life people and the cinematic illusions they assembled by hand. But it has the urgency of fiction, pulsing with its characters’ deeply held desires and fears … “The film has opened a door on to the past, and something is moving, down there in the dark,” Danilo says to Nicholas. We can feel it too * Vulture, ‘The Best Books of 2025’ *An arresting narrative about art, filmmaking, and desire in 1970s Italy … Shimmery and dreamlike, The Silver Book lives up to the promise of its name * Los Angeles Review of Books *A transportive, hot-blooded book, flooded by Roman light, sticky heat, and scooter exhaust—and a potent tribute to the fierce, uncompromising vision of Pasolini, whose dark warnings have come home to roost fifty years later * AnOther Magazine *Laing’s background as an arts writer, and their clear love of visual art, comes through in the language of beauty and pleasure that suffuses The Silver Book … The text is unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic, a delight to read … they have a gift for capturing the subtle fluctuations of yearning and desire … Laing’s strength as a biographer and historian makes The Silver Book sing on a deeper level; their lush, beautiful prose is backed by meticulous research … In our own era of rising fascism, of increasing violence and conservatism, Laing’s novel feels eerily timely – Emily Watlington * Art in America, ‘6 Books We’re Looking Forward to in November’ *

Olivia Laing is an author and critic who has written eight books, including The Lonely City, Everybody- A Book About Freedom, and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Their books have been translated into 21 languages.