Alessandro baricco silk summary
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Silk
The novel opens as a silkworm disease eradicates the species all over Europe and North Africa. Hervé’s town depends on the silk trade, and local magnate Balbadiou, who owns the town’s silk mills, dispatches Hervé to Japan to buy silkworm eggs there. The task is dangerous. Japan is still all but closed to foreigners, and Japanese law forbids the export of silkworms. Furthermore, the journey to Japan takes months. Hervé must cross the entire latitude of Europe and Asia to get there.
Hervé’s beloved wife, Hélène, is reluctant to see him go for so long, but husband and wife both know that without the silkworm eggs
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Silk
France, 1861. When an epidemic threatens to wipe out the silk trade in France, Herve Joncour, a young silkworm breeder, has to travel overland to distant Japan, out of bounds to foreigners, to smuggle out healthy silkworms.In the course of his secret negotiations with the local baron, Joncour’s attention is arrested by the man’s concubine, a girl who does not have oriental eyes. Although they are unable to exchange so much as a word, love blossoms between them, a love that is conveyed in a number of recondite messages.How their secret affair develops is told in this remarkable love story.
“Mesmerising and starkly beautiful”
observer
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“A heart-breaking love story told in the form of a classic fable … A stylistic tour dem force, a literary gem of bewitching power”
sunday Times
“Deeply moving … A delicately crafted love story and an anatomy of desire”
guardian
“An intensely powerful and perceptive drama of the deepest human desires …
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Silk (novel)
1996 novel by Alessandro Baricco
Silk (Italian: Seta) is a 1996 novel by the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. It was translated into English in 1997 by Guido Waldman. A new English translation by Ann Goldstein was published in 2006.
Plot
[edit]The extraordinary novel tells the story of a French silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler named Hervé Joncour in 19th century France who travels to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply. His first trip to Japan takes place in the Bakumatsu period, when Japan was still largely closed to foreigners. During his stay in Japan, he becomes obsessed with the concubine of a local baron. His trade in Japan and his personal relationship with the concubine are both strained by the internal political turmoil and growing anti-Western sentiment in Japan that followed the arrival of Matthew C. Perry in Edo Bay.
Adaptations
[edit]Silk has been adapted for stage and film: