**SIGNED** The Silver Book by Olivia Laing (Pre-Order)

Publication Date: 6th November 2025

It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young
English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the
magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular
visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for
Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs.

He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the
studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the
spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of
fascism.

But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature
passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as
an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.

The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the
dream factory of cinema. It’s a fictional account of real things, and an
investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and
reality, love and power.

Hardback / 288 pages