Sign up to our emails and be the first to know about new releases, special offers and more.
Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier. Sign in or sign up for free!
Hello Readings Member! Go to the member centre to view your orders, change your details, or view your lists, or sign out.
Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
Tim Parks
From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Europa, a beautifully wrought story of love and memory set in the dramatic landscape of the Alps
Daniel Burrow once began a beautiful walk…
In stock at 8 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 8 shops
Set in a grand hotel as Milan shuts down in early 2020, this is a classic story of a man's emotional reckoning and the unexpected kindness of strangers
From the…
In stock at 4 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 4 shops
Following the critical and commercial success of A Literary Tour of Italy, acclaimed novelist Tim Parks presents a new selection of his latest essays on Italian literature, offering a lively…
Available to order, ships in approx 2 weeksAvailable to order
From the bestselling author of Italian Neighbours, An Italian Education and Italian Ways, Italian Life is a particular reckoning with a beloved adopted country.
In stock at 5 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 5 shops
Henry Dodge's trials and tribulations continue in The Best Laid Plans, but this time around the stakes are much higher! He struggles with the aftereffects of the Summer of 1985…
Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians - conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants, this title captures what makes Italian life distinctive.
In stock at 3 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 3 shops
But like any place that’s become home I hate it too. How does an Englishman cope when he moves to Italy - not the tourist idyll but the real Italy…
Roberto Calasso
A book that begins before Adam and ends after us. In this magisterial work, figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new light: one that is…
An immersive and mesmerizing narrative that reimagines the Mesopotamian myth of the Great Flood
A long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood…
Available to order, ships in 3-5 daysAvailable to order
Niccolo Machiavelli
How does a ruler win respect? Should a ruler be feared rather than loved? This handbook on power and politics grapples with these questions.
In stock at 7 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 7 shops
How can a leader be strong and decisive, yet still inspire loyalty in his followers? When is it necessary to break the rules? Is it better to be feared than…
In stock at 2 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 2 shops
Cesare Pavese
A devastating novel set in wartime Italy from the great twentieth-century writer, in a new translation by Tim Parks
June, 1943. Allied aircraft are bombing industrial Turin; Fascist Italy seems…
In Pavese’s last and greatest novel, Nuto, an orphan saved from death by a rural family, returns to Italy from America soon after World War II. He is now rich…
Italo Calvino
Includes stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
A daring novel, once widely censored, about the scrappy, harrowing, and inventive lives of Rome's unhoused youth by one of Italy's greatest film directors.
A daring novel, once widely censored…
A collection of short stories covering the length of the author’s writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. It includes fables; a town where…
Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute. So what is the sparkling, magnetically attractive Beth Marriot doing here? Why is a young woman whose irrepressible vitality and confident ego were…
Should you finish every book you start? How has your family influenced the way you read? What is literary style? How is the Nobel Prize like the World Cup? This…
Available to order, ships in approx 4 weeksAvailable to order
After delighting us with his novels and many volumes of non-fiction, Tim Parks - who is not only an acclaimed author and a translator, but also a celebrated literary essayist…
In the Italian Alps a group of English canoeists arrive for an ‘introduction to white water.’ Camping, eating and paddling together, six adults and nine adolescents seem set to enjoy…
Available to order, ships in approx 3 weeksAvailable to order
The gift of tongues, prophecy exorcism… what might such concepts mean in a complacent backwater of North London? For Richard Bowen, adolescence becomes a nightmare when his parents join the…
An Englishman, married to an Italian, is informed of the suicide of his son. He decides to leave his wife of 30 years standing in this exploration of marriage and…
Daniel Savage is a Crown Court judge. In this novel by Tim Parks the author offers a penetrating glimpse into the human condition when, through the judge’s eyes, he observes…
Overweight and overwrought, Howard Cleaver, London’s successful journalist, abruptly abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. Humiliated by his inability to…
‘For some time now, I have been plagued, perhaps blessed, by dreams of rivers and seas, dreams of water’. Just days after Albert James writes these lines to his son…
Drawing on anecdote and autobiography, Tim Parks explores various subjects, such as ghosts, Indian gods, Verona Football Club, adultery and the EC. The aim is to make the reader appreciate…
From Svevo, Saba and Joyce in Trieste to Borges, Rushdie and psychopathology, this collection of essays covers other subjects such as: Saramago, Sebald, Seth, Henry Green, Christina Stead, Leopardi, Verga…
George believes that life is worth living only if it is happy, and that if someone he loves is suffering he should move heaven and earth to end that suffering…
Begins with a corpse and a chilling question: Why has nice, ordinary, affectionate Anna picked up a knife and murdered the man she insists she loves? Winner of the John…
On a Mediterranean island, an English geologist is to inspect a quarry on behalf of an Australian client. He has brought along his mistress and pushed his wife and family…
A black comedy of family life, by the award-winning author of Tongues of Flame and Loving Roger . Raymond has gone mad. His family have planned their lives so carefully…
The brilliant sequel to Juggling the Stars.
The first Duckworth novel is Better than Silence of the Lambs … Macabre fun orchestrated with immaculate precision. It’s a killer (Los Angeles Times)
Morris Duckworth teaches English to the…
The acclaimed author of Italian Ways returns with an exploration into Italy’s past and present-following in the footsteps of Garibaldi’s famed 250-mile journey across the Apennines.
Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football (which we Americans know as soccer ) a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient…
‘Somehow it seemed to him the only thing that would really solve the problem would be to return to the sea and find the old ring with their names and…
How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? The author - lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer…
Thomas needs to speak to his mother before she dies. But he’s set to give a talk to a conference of physiotherapists in the Netherlands;
A novel in which a young woman, Julia, leaves everything she holds dear in Britain and heads for Verona, where she meets a motley group of ex-patriates, a revolutionary Scot…
A revelatory read with delightful cultural and literary references, Teach us to Sit Still by Booker-shortlisted author Tim Parks examines how the philosophy of ‘sit still, relax and stop worrying’…
In a stunning nonfiction debut, the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of Goodness and Family Planning celebrates ten years of living in a northern Italian neighborhood. This is a rare work…
This is a New York Review book –Title page verso.
How does an Italian become Italian? In An Italian Education Tim Parks focuses on his own young children in the small village near Verona where he lives, building a fascinating…
From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, these essays will give English readers, and lovers…
Arising from a dissatisfaction with blandly general or abstrusely theoretical approaches to translation, this book sets out to show, through detailed and lively analysis, what it really means to translate…
From the bestselling writer of Italian Ways, Europa and The Hero's Way, a story set during the first days of lockdown in Europe, about the unexpected kindness of strangers…
