A short life of the author
Alessandro Baricco (b. 1958) was born on 28 January 1958 in Turin, Italy. He studied philosophy and music. He worked as a music critic and television presenter before publishing fiction. He founded the Scuola Holden (Holden School of Storytelling) in Turin in 1994.
Life and Career
Castelli di rabbia (1991, Castles of Anger) was his debut. Oceano mare (1993, Ocean Sea) — a novel about a hotel at the edge of the ocean where characters arrive to paint the sea, to be healed, or to wait — established his lyrical, compressed style.
Seta (1996, Silk) — about Hervé Joncour, a French merchant who travels four times to Japan to buy silkworm eggs in the 1860s, and the woman he glimpses there — was an international phenomenon. It is 100 pages long, composed of short, numbered chapters, and its prose has the lucidity of fable. It was translated into over forty languages and adapted as a 2007 film.
City (1999) was a postmodern boxing novel. An Iliad (2004) was a retelling of Homer. Mr Gwyn (2011) — about a novelist who stops writing novels and begins creating portraits through extended observation — was his most metafictional work. The Game (2018) — a nonfiction book about the digital revolution — was widely read in Italy.
Key Works
- Silk (1996)
- Ocean Sea (1993)
- Mr Gwyn (2011)
Collecting Baricco
Italian firsts (Rizzoli/Feltrinelli) are the true editions. Silk (1997, Harvill English translation by Ann Goldstein) brings $10–$30.