Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

In Alessandro Baricco's celebrated debut, it was silk that exerted a fatal attraction. This time it's the ocean, whose watery charms cause an entire cast of characters to convene at the isolated Almayer Inn. The guests include a seductress, an eccentric professor, and a painter with a pronounced penchant for metaphysics. They're soon joined by the beautiful young daughter of a local aristocrat, who's been stricken with a mysterious illness. In a sense, however, all these characters are suffering from maladies--psychological, existential, erotic--which makes the Almayer Inn a kind of Magic Mountain with beachfront footage. The author is a renowned opera critic in his native Italy. Perhaps this accounts for his love of linguistic arias, which can overpower the plot of Ocean Sea. When Baricco gets rolling, of course, his intricately worked prose is a delight. Even the inn itself, situated alone on a promontory, gets the red carpet treatment: "So alone it was there, it seemed a thing forgotten. It was almost as if a procession of inns, of every kind and vintage, had passed by there one day, skirting the coast, when, out of tiredness, one had detached itself from the rest, and, as its travelling companions filed past, it decided to stop on that slight rise, yielding to its own weakness, bowing its head and waiting for the end." At his best, Baricco recalls Italo Calvino--there's the same pleasure in elegant riddles and rococo storytelling. Here and there the narrative of Ocean Sea vanishes down a dead end, and the author's weakness for typographical trickery doesn't help. Still, Baricco's novel remains a refreshing dunk in what Christina Stead called "the ocean of story"--and a brainy exploration of the littoral truth. --Bob Brandeis

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

Sweet and dreamlike, 27 Oct 2007
A sweet book with lovable characters, generous humour and some interesting thoughts on the human condition. The ever-present sea gives a dreamlike quality to the writing. I found myself reminded of Georges Perec's "Life: a user's manual", perhaps due to the nihlistic activities of some of the characters, and the surely-beyond-coincidence similarity of the name "Bartleboom" to Perec's central character. A good read, to be recalled with affection.

good dream, 05 Mar 2003
unusual, dreamlike piece of writing. the author isn't particularly concerned with characterisation, and his characters are of interest only in so far as they represent a particular activity or condition; the aristocratic girl has her peculiar illness, the painter his wish to paint the beginning of the sea, the professor, neatly enough, his wish to measure the end of it. Baricco's characters drift around the narrative like disembodied ghosts, but perhaps this just serves to add to the hallucinatory quality of the novel, where several of the characters actually are ghosts and the action takes place in a point outside time. the second half of the book's chapters on cannibalism give excellent demonstration of the author's artistic boldness and poetic skills. and poetic is perhaps the important word here. lovers of poetry will enjoy this book, those looking for more conventional 'plot and characterisation based' prose may struggle with it.

Beautiful story, 06 Feb 2002
Not quite the 5 stars that 'Silk' deserves, but this is a lovely rich story with wonderful characters.

SEEING THE SEA, 31 Jul 2001
Some never see it. The sea in their hart. But never mind, those who see it still have books. But they also have troubles sometimes. For example : You have been for years in your library. You regularly read the book-pages of some newspapers and magazines. You're even a librarian, as I am, of a quite (would-be) modern (semi-public) library. Yes, you might even be me. And like me, you have never remarked Ocean Sea of this Italian author of whom you've never heard, until an engimatic but wise woman, your teacher Drama at the local Academy of Arts, tells you they are going to bring it on stage (written by who ? everyone yells, and then : never heard of, very difficult, sakespeare-like I presume ... ). And then you read it, and you really see the sea. Experiencing it on scene makes it even worse : escaping this yearning feeling to tell everyone you meet they absolutely must read this book becomes impossible. And in every letter you write to your many pals, you can't stop mentioning Plasson, the painter who wants to leave his canvas white but not blanco, or others. This story is all about puzzles : pieces coming together and breaking up. It's about leaving things undefined. It's about the sea : you can dive in it, you get a little bit wet, but you can't breath under the sea, unless you wear an O2-mask, and even then. Some books take you up in the air and leave you there. Some put you down to the ground and under it. This one makes you feel alive and you keep reading it. This one you want to share with your best friends. And you would even want to e-mail on it. But you will never give it away. I promise !

really powerful, 17 May 2001
This book is really powerful. The characters are disturbingly bizarre and the storyline intense enough to stay with you when you have finished reading it. I love its timeless magical realism and its crazy imagery.

Don't let anyone put you off. This is intelligent and accessible. Above all, it is a satisfying, absorbing read.

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

Sweet and dreamlike, 27 Oct 2007
A sweet book with lovable characters, generous humour and some interesting thoughts on the human condition. The ever-present sea gives a dreamlike quality to the writing. I found myself reminded of Georges Perec's "Life: a user's manual", perhaps due to the nihlistic activities of some of the characters, and the surely-beyond-coincidence similarity of the name "Bartleboom" to Perec's central character. A good read, to be recalled with affection.

good dream, 05 Mar 2003
unusual, dreamlike piece of writing. the author isn't particularly concerned with characterisation, and his characters are of interest only in so far as they represent a particular activity or condition; the aristocratic girl has her peculiar illness, the painter his wish to paint the beginning of the sea, the professor, neatly enough, his wish to measure the end of it. Baricco's characters drift around the narrative like disembodied ghosts, but perhaps this just serves to add to the hallucinatory quality of the novel, where several of the characters actually are ghosts and the action takes place in a point outside time. the second half of the book's chapters on cannibalism give excellent demonstration of the author's artistic boldness and poetic skills. and poetic is perhaps the important word here. lovers of poetry will enjoy this book, those looking for more conventional 'plot and characterisation based' prose may struggle with it.

Beautiful story, 06 Feb 2002
Not quite the 5 stars that 'Silk' deserves, but this is a lovely rich story with wonderful characters.

SEEING THE SEA, 31 Jul 2001
Some never see it. The sea in their hart. But never mind, those who see it still have books. But they also have troubles sometimes. For example : You have been for years in your library. You regularly read the book-pages of some newspapers and magazines. You're even a librarian, as I am, of a quite (would-be) modern (semi-public) library. Yes, you might even be me. And like me, you have never remarked Ocean Sea of this Italian author of whom you've never heard, until an engimatic but wise woman, your teacher Drama at the local Academy of Arts, tells you they are going to bring it on stage (written by who ? everyone yells, and then : never heard of, very difficult, sakespeare-like I presume ... ). And then you read it, and you really see the sea. Experiencing it on scene makes it even worse : escaping this yearning feeling to tell everyone you meet they absolutely must read this book becomes impossible. And in every letter you write to your many pals, you can't stop mentioning Plasson, the painter who wants to leave his canvas white but not blanco, or others. This story is all about puzzles : pieces coming together and breaking up. It's about leaving things undefined. It's about the sea : you can dive in it, you get a little bit wet, but you can't breath under the sea, unless you wear an O2-mask, and even then. Some books take you up in the air and leave you there. Some put you down to the ground and under it. This one makes you feel alive and you keep reading it. This one you want to share with your best friends. And you would even want to e-mail on it. But you will never give it away. I promise !

really powerful, 17 May 2001
This book is really powerful. The characters are disturbingly bizarre and the storyline intense enough to stay with you when you have finished reading it. I love its timeless magical realism and its crazy imagery.

Don't let anyone put you off. This is intelligent and accessible. Above all, it is a satisfying, absorbing read.

Silk, 08 Jan 2003
This is as close as a novel can come to a poem. A story of silk threads linking worlds of reality and possibility. A fairy tale poised between the 19th century silk weaving business in the south of France and the mysterious, fabled connections of silk in the orient with wealth, love, power and politics.
Hervé Joncour travels first to North Africa and then to Japan to buy healthy silkworm eggs and bring them back to his native village; in parallel with his business deals, he finds himself caught in a gossamer web of loves and desires that impel him forward into unknown and dangerous territory, both geographically and emotionally, and he is left to interpret what he sees and hears in his own way - and so are we. The eventual unravelling of these mysteries is as puzzling for him as it is unexpected for us. In his mature years he retires into solitude, to ponder his life and adventures, these no longer a riddle to be guarded in secret, but a story to be told and shared.
This book carries the reader along, as if on a quiet country walk; it is mysterious and spellbinding; it is delightful, insightful and compelling; it is full of metaphor and it is also, just a little self-consciously, a work of art.

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

Sweet and dreamlike, 27 Oct 2007
A sweet book with lovable characters, generous humour and some interesting thoughts on the human condition. The ever-present sea gives a dreamlike quality to the writing. I found myself reminded of Georges Perec's "Life: a user's manual", perhaps due to the nihlistic activities of some of the characters, and the surely-beyond-coincidence similarity of the name "Bartleboom" to Perec's central character. A good read, to be recalled with affection.

good dream, 05 Mar 2003
unusual, dreamlike piece of writing. the author isn't particularly concerned with characterisation, and his characters are of interest only in so far as they represent a particular activity or condition; the aristocratic girl has her peculiar illness, the painter his wish to paint the beginning of the sea, the professor, neatly enough, his wish to measure the end of it. Baricco's characters drift around the narrative like disembodied ghosts, but perhaps this just serves to add to the hallucinatory quality of the novel, where several of the characters actually are ghosts and the action takes place in a point outside time. the second half of the book's chapters on cannibalism give excellent demonstration of the author's artistic boldness and poetic skills. and poetic is perhaps the important word here. lovers of poetry will enjoy this book, those looking for more conventional 'plot and characterisation based' prose may struggle with it.

Beautiful story, 06 Feb 2002
Not quite the 5 stars that 'Silk' deserves, but this is a lovely rich story with wonderful characters.

SEEING THE SEA, 31 Jul 2001
Some never see it. The sea in their hart. But never mind, those who see it still have books. But they also have troubles sometimes. For example : You have been for years in your library. You regularly read the book-pages of some newspapers and magazines. You're even a librarian, as I am, of a quite (would-be) modern (semi-public) library. Yes, you might even be me. And like me, you have never remarked Ocean Sea of this Italian author of whom you've never heard, until an engimatic but wise woman, your teacher Drama at the local Academy of Arts, tells you they are going to bring it on stage (written by who ? everyone yells, and then : never heard of, very difficult, sakespeare-like I presume ... ). And then you read it, and you really see the sea. Experiencing it on scene makes it even worse : escaping this yearning feeling to tell everyone you meet they absolutely must read this book becomes impossible. And in every letter you write to your many pals, you can't stop mentioning Plasson, the painter who wants to leave his canvas white but not blanco, or others. This story is all about puzzles : pieces coming together and breaking up. It's about leaving things undefined. It's about the sea : you can dive in it, you get a little bit wet, but you can't breath under the sea, unless you wear an O2-mask, and even then. Some books take you up in the air and leave you there. Some put you down to the ground and under it. This one makes you feel alive and you keep reading it. This one you want to share with your best friends. And you would even want to e-mail on it. But you will never give it away. I promise !

really powerful, 17 May 2001
This book is really powerful. The characters are disturbingly bizarre and the storyline intense enough to stay with you when you have finished reading it. I love its timeless magical realism and its crazy imagery.

Don't let anyone put you off. This is intelligent and accessible. Above all, it is a satisfying, absorbing read.

Silk, 08 Jan 2003
This is as close as a novel can come to a poem. A story of silk threads linking worlds of reality and possibility. A fairy tale poised between the 19th century silk weaving business in the south of France and the mysterious, fabled connections of silk in the orient with wealth, love, power and politics.
Hervé Joncour travels first to North Africa and then to Japan to buy healthy silkworm eggs and bring them back to his native village; in parallel with his business deals, he finds himself caught in a gossamer web of loves and desires that impel him forward into unknown and dangerous territory, both geographically and emotionally, and he is left to interpret what he sees and hears in his own way - and so are we. The eventual unravelling of these mysteries is as puzzling for him as it is unexpected for us. In his mature years he retires into solitude, to ponder his life and adventures, these no longer a riddle to be guarded in secret, but a story to be told and shared.
This book carries the reader along, as if on a quiet country walk; it is mysterious and spellbinding; it is delightful, insightful and compelling; it is full of metaphor and it is also, just a little self-consciously, a work of art.

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

Poetic and sensual, 12 Jul 2008
`Silk' by Alessandro Baricco is a poetic, sensual novel set in 1862, France. The book is moderately short, but the quality of the writing transports you with the descriptions of beauty and eroticism.

This is the tale of Hervé Joncour, a silkworm merchant who is married to the beautiful Hélène Joncour. Hervé is convinced by Baldabiou, a businessman, to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. During his travel to Japan, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.


Lyrical, sparse and lovely, 27 Mar 2008
Certain reviewers compared this to Haiku, but to my mind this has something of the fable about it. It was reminiscent of a more pared down version of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber stories. It does not have the vivacity of Carter, preferring instead a quiet intensity that suits the tale itself. This is the story of one man's quiet passion for what he cannot have. It is a thing of beauty.

Beautiful but marred, 07 Jan 2008
This is a delightful haunting book redolent of Calvino's invisible cities,

but the second love letter is crude and jars in the otherwise parred down writing

fairy tale prose , 13 Jul 2006
Whilst never unique or monumental enough to be a classic, the charged writing masked within childlike fairy tale prose ensures this slim volume will capture the heart and mind of any reader.

Hypnotic tale of loss and longing, 18 May 2006
This powerful and erotic tale reveals how one's man desire threatens to ruin his life.

It is 1861 and Hervé Joncour is a silk breeder from France who is happily married to the beautiful Helene. Compelled to travel illegally to Japan alone in search of disease-free silkworms, Hervé comes across a "girl who does not have oriental eyes" and, despite not exchanging one word with her, falls deeply in love.

Over the course of several years Hervé continues to make return trips to Japan in order to buy more silkworms and to lay his eyes on the beautiful and intriguing woman to whom he has become enthralled.

When the woman gives him a note that reveals her love for him, Hervé finds his life in France unravelling as he becomes more obsessed with the woman at "the end of the earth". He channels his frustrations into building a beautiful park in the grounds of his home and takes his wife on exotic holidays to hide his unhappiness.

When a second erotically charged letter arrives from his lover he is distraught by the contents, for while it is professes love and devotion it also warns Hervé to never seek contact with her again...

In the style of an old-fashioned fable, Alessandro Baricco has crafted a beautiful and mesmirising novella. Some of the chapters are so short they read more like poems, which greatly adds to the charm and mystique of the story. The writing is hynotic, repetive and deeply affecting.

I read this book in under an hour and found myself greatly moved by the love affair. And the shock ending left me feeling stunned, so much so I wasn't quite sure if I had fully understood what had happened: had I read too much into it?

Ultimately this is an astonishing piece of writing. Heart-breaking, bewitching and passionate.

"Without Blood - Without Poetry - Without Life", 09 Sep 2007
After reading "Silk", followed by "Lands of Glass" and "Ocean Sea" it was with great anticipation that I awaited "Without Blood". The blurb on the cover gave great promise. I was surprised at the length of the work, a mere 87 pages. Certainly not a novel, just a short story. Now that I've read it I can see why - Baricco had nothing much to say.

"Without Blood" lacks the imaginative poetic lyricism of the other three novels I've just mentioned. The characters in those were slightly fantastic, eccentric and yet utterly human and infallible. Echoes of the imagery stay with you long after reading. In "Without Blood" I could find no real humanity in the characters. I could also not believe the 'voice' and thoughts of the 4 year-old Nina and felt simply a sense of detachment from her situation and that of Tito, her saviour.

I suspect that the problem lies in the time-setting. Baricco's other three novels are set in the 19th century - a period much removed from our own experience and therefore open to mythic interpretation. The difficulty in "Without Blood" is in trying to create a sense of atmosphere in the period shortly after the Spanish Civil War as well as the present day - it is far too close, too real to merge into myth, so Baricco failed.

This should not have been released as a stand alone story, but rather might have worked better in a collection of short stories. "Silk" and the other novels far outshine this meagre volume.



Quiet, understated read, 15 Apr 2006
I read this anorexic-looking book cover to cover in less than an hour and now, forced to try and shape my thoughts about it into some semblance of a review, I feel myself itching to read it again.

The story is essentially a revenge tale, although it is tempered by other human emotions, like love and loss, memory and forgiveness, and how we are all shaped by the events of our past.

It opens with a young four-year-old girl, Nina, being forced to hide in a hole under the floorboards of a country farmhouse in Italy. Here she is safe from the murderous men who brutally kill her father and her brother.

During the killing spree one of the attackers finds Nina's hiding spot but leaves her alone, a moment which we later find out has haunted him his whole life.

Later, when the story leaps ahead, we meet Nina as an elegant woman in her fifties. She has tracked down her 'saviour' and invited him for a drink. He knows that the two other attackers with him on that fateful day have died under mysterious circumstances and he believes that this woman - the girl from the farmhouse - is going to extract her final revenge. But he goes for the drink regardless...

Without Blood is a quiet, understated read. The prose is restrained, economic, minimal. Even the dialogue between characters is clipped and sparse. There is no extraneous detail of any kind, so there is nothing to get in the way of the story. Stripped down to the bare minimum, Baricco is able to demonstrate very clearly how the legacy of that one brutal day of violence has shaped the lives of the two main characters.

Ultimately, this novella may be an incredibly short read, but it is a deeply affecting one that packs a powerful punch. As someone who very rarely re-reads books, I'll be delving back into this one again soon to experience its subtle beauty all over again.

Exquisite, 09 Jun 2004
A jewel of a story, Superbly judged prose -- superbly translated . Less than ninety pages of exquisite story-telling that you could go back to again and again and find something different to reflect on each time. A tiny masterpiece

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.


Baricco's monument to war, 13 Sep 2007
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

Sweet and dreamlike, 27 Oct 2007
A sweet book with lovable characters, generous humour and some interesting thoughts on the human condition. The ever-present sea gives a dreamlike quality to the writing. I found myself reminded of Georges Perec's "Life: a user's manual", perhaps due to the nihlistic activities of some of the characters, and the surely-beyond-coincidence similarity of the name "Bartleboom" to Perec's central character. A good read, to be recalled with affection.

good dream, 05 Mar 2003
unusual, dreamlike piece of writing. the author isn't particularly concerned with characterisation, and his characters are of interest only in so far as they represent a particular activity or condition; the aristocratic girl has her peculiar illness, the painter his wish to paint the beginning of the sea, the professor, neatly enough, his wish to measure the end of it. Baricco's characters drift around the narrative like disembodied ghosts, but perhaps this just serves to add to the hallucinatory quality of the novel, where several of the characters actually are ghosts and the action takes place in a point outside time. the second half of the book's chapters on cannibalism give excellent demonstration of the author's artistic boldness and poetic skills. and poetic is perhaps the important word here. lovers of poetry will enjoy this book, those looking for more conventional 'plot and characterisation based' prose may struggle with it.

Beautiful story, 06 Feb 2002
Not quite the 5 stars that 'Silk' deserves, but this is a lovely rich story with wonderful characters.

SEEING THE SEA, 31 Jul 2001
Some never see it. The sea in their hart. But never mind, those who see it still have books. But they also have troubles sometimes. For example : You have been for years in your library. You regularly read the book-pages of some newspapers and magazines. You're even a librarian, as I am, of a quite (would-be) modern (semi-public) library. Yes, you might even be me. And like me, you have never remarked Ocean Sea of this Italian author of whom you've never heard, until an engimatic but wise woman, your teacher Drama at the local Academy of Arts, tells you they are going to bring it on stage (written by who ? everyone yells, and then : never heard of, very difficult, sakespeare-like I presume ... ). And then you read it, and you really see the sea. Experiencing it on scene makes it even worse : escaping this yearning feeling to tell everyone you meet they absolutely must read this book becomes impossible. And in every letter you write to your many pals, you can't stop mentioning Plasson, the painter who wants to leave his canvas white but not blanco, or others. This story is all about puzzles : pieces coming together and breaking up. It's about leaving things undefined. It's about the sea : you can dive in it, you get a little bit wet, but you can't breath under the sea, unless you wear an O2-mask, and even then. Some books take you up in the air and leave you there. Some put you down to the ground and under it. This one makes you feel alive and you keep reading it. This one you want to share with your best friends. And you would even want to e-mail on it. But you will never give it away. I promise !

really powerful, 17 May 2001
This book is really powerful. The characters are disturbingly bizarre and the storyline intense enough to stay with you when you have finished reading it. I love its timeless magical realism and its crazy imagery.

Don't let anyone put you off. This is intelligent and accessible. Above all, it is a satisfying, absorbing read.

Silk, 08 Jan 2003
This is as close as a novel can come to a poem. A story of silk threads linking worlds of reality and possibility. A fairy tale poised between the 19th century silk weaving business in the south of France and the mysterious, fabled connections of silk in the orient with wealth, love, power and politics.
Hervé Joncour travels first to North Africa and then to Japan to buy healthy silkworm eggs and bring them back to his native village; in parallel with his business deals, he finds himself caught in a gossamer web of loves and desires that impel him forward into unknown and dangerous territory, both geographically and emotionally, and he is left to interpret what he sees and hears in his own way - and so are we. The eventual unravelling of these mysteries is as puzzling for him as it is unexpected for us. In his mature years he retires into solitude, to ponder his life and adventures, these no longer a riddle to be guarded in secret, but a story to be told and shared.
This book carries the reader along, as if on a quiet country walk; it is mysterious and spellbinding; it is delightful, insightful and compelling; it is full of metaphor and it is also, just a little self-consciously, a work of art.

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad, 05 Aug 2008
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text