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Tim Parks

Goodreads Author

Born

in Manchester, The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.timparks.com/

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction, Travel

Member Since

December 2018

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Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, raising a family of three children. He has written fourteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, and most recently In Extremis.
During the nineties he wrote two, personal and highly popular accounts of his life in northern Italy, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education. These were complemented in 2002 by A Season with Verona, a grand overview of Italian life as seen through the passion of football. Other non-fiction works include a history of the Medici bank in 15th century Florence, Medici Money and a memoir on health, illness and meditation, Teach ...more

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Combine Editions
Tim Parks’s books

Average rating: 3.82 · 26,154 ratings · 2,620 reviews · 86 distinct works • Similar authors

	Italian Neighbors 3.71 avg rating — 2,443 ratings — published 1985 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character . . . and Goals! 4.13 avg rating — 1,404 ratings — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo 3.69 avg rating — 1,419 ratings — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Italian Education 3.86 avg rating — 1,189 ratings — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing 3.72 avg rating — 1,093 ratings — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence 3.65 avg rating — 642 ratings — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Europa 3.35 avg rating — 480 ratings — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books 3.58 avg rating — 579 ratings — published 2015 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Destiny 3.81 avg rating — 237 ratings — published 2001 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cleaver 3.33 avg rating — 180 ratings — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Tim Parks…

Series by Tim Parks

Italy and Italians (5 books)
by

Tim Parks (Goodreads Author)

3.81 avg rating — 7,095 ratings

Writers and Literature (6 books)
by

Tim Parks (Goodreads Author)

3.57 avg rating — 642 ratings

The Deadly Mr Duckworth (3 books)
by

Tim Parks (Goodreads Author)

3.46 avg rating — 357 ratings

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Tim Parks rated a book really liked it Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist by David Lipset	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A fascinating biography of the life of one of the oddest scientists and most creative thinkers in the 20th century. Bateson revolutionized anthropology in the 1930s with his ideas about 'schismogenesis' in social relations, that is how people become ...more
Mar 21, 2019 06:46AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book really liked it The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe by David I. Kertzer	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a very fine piece of tradional narrative history writing. Clearly a huge amount of research has gone into it, but Kertzer does the job of sifting it for us and putting it in narrative form. If there is any problem it's that you sometimes feel ...more
Feb 13, 2019 11:48PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is honestly one of the strangest and most exhilarating novels you are ever likely to read. Stendhal explores the 'reality' or perhaps madness of living with passion, without fear or conformity. One never quite knows whether one's reading a reali ...more
Feb 03, 2019 11:38PM · 3 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait by Henry Green	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Green is one of the most extraordinary, charming and disquieting of 20th century British authors. This little autobiography, written as the Second War began and he felt death must be imminent is always engaging and provoking. Worth a thousand histori ...more
Jan 29, 2019 04:48AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones by Giambattista Basile	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a quite unique reading experience and an extraordinary translation from Nancy Canepa. It's hard to remember a book so packed with mad life and weird wisdom.
Jan 06, 2019 02:34AM · 1 like · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing The Story of My Escape: The Story of My Escape from the Prisons of the Republic of Venice Otherwise Known as the Leads by Giacomo Casanova	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
For anyone who thinks of Casanova only as a seducer, this will come as a big surprise. It's an entertaining, but also moving and disturbing account of his time in the gloomy prisons of Venice and his extraordinary escape.
Jan 03, 2019 07:14AM · 3 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing Loving / Living / Party Going by Henry Green	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
These three books are certainly among the finest Green wrote. No library in the English language could be complete without them
Jan 03, 2019 07:12AM · 3 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing Party Going by Henry Green	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This book was one of the most powerful influences on my early writing. In terms of style it is quite unique. Simply there is no other reading experience like it. Just a few pages in you know you're in an entirely new world of feeling and perception.
Jan 03, 2019 07:12AM · 5 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks rated a book it was amazing Party Going by Henry Green	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This book was one of the most powerful influences on my early writing. In terms of style it is quite unique. Simply there is no other reading experience like it. Just a few pages in you know you're in an entirely new world of feeling and perception.
Jan 03, 2019 07:10AM · 5 likes · like · see review
Tim Parks made a comment on their review of Within the Walls " And to you... "
Jan 03, 2019 12:16AM · see review

More of Tim's books…

Quotes by Tim Parks

“With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.”
― Tim Parks

11 likes

“Life is simply too short for the wrong books, or even the right books at the wrong time.”
― Tim Parks, Stop What You're Doing and Read This!

7 likes

“It took Descartes to deduce that God would not wish to deceive us. The world must be as it appears to be, the Frenchman deduced, because a perfect God would never wish to deceive us. Nothing has been explicable since.”
― Tim Parks, Europa

tags: god, reality, truth

5 likes

See all Tim Parks's quotes »

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Loosed in Transla...: Tim Parks essay on translating Roberto Calasso	1	11	Feb 28, 2013 11:10AM
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