Tim Parks

Guest of the ilb 2006

Tim Parks was born in Manchester in 1954 and grew up in London. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard and in 1981 moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, teaching Literary Translation at the University of Milan. Over the course of his productive literary career Parks has published thirteen novels, numerous essays, short stories and academic texts. For his first novel, »Tongues of Flame« (1985) he was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award and the Betty Trask Prize. Parks depicts the development of religious obsession through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old. The taut, unpretentious prose offers an exciting contrast to the complexity of the emotionality presented.
Parks's novels are characterised overall by a brilliant linkage of heterogeneous parts. The author tackles his characters' inner torment with humour that borders on the grotesque and, in doing so, seemingly effortlessly maintains the balance between the tragic and the banal, or – as »Die Zeit« comments – »between tragedy and soap«. Alongside abortive, malfunctioning relationships and existential crises, the novels often deal with the latent power of destruction under the seemingly glittering facades of political or social institutions. This is where Parks the moralist sticks his finger in the wounds of modern bourgeois life, as the title of his story collection »Adultery and Other Diversions« (1998) illustrates.
In »Judge Savage« (2003), as often in his novels, Parks fuses personal narrative and inner monologue. The depiction of how successful Judge David Savage's world collapses unfolds through the protagonist's own nervous, erratic stream of consciousness perspective. His latest work, »Cleaver« (2006), combines the setting of an impressive natural landscape with the unstable emotional world of the acclaimed and feared television presenter Harold Cleaver, who all of a sudden feels the urge to flee his family, colleagues and the media. He goes in search of an Alpine cabin in southern Tyrol located above »the noise line«. There he lives in absolute isolation and tranquility, is out of everyone's reach and cannot communicate with anyone since he does not understand the local language. Yet he finds no peace, for the thoughts and the voices in his head become ever louder and more disturbing.
Parks's non-fictition works include a study of literary translation, a history of the Medici and three books on the life of his homeland of choice, northern Italy, in which Parks sheds light on the Italian mentality through sharp insights and humour. Some of his essays, a number of which have already been published in the »New York Review of Books«, have also been published in two collections. The author has translated many works by the Italian writers Alberto Moravia, Antonio Tabucchi, Roberto Calasso and Italo Calvino into English. He has received numerous awards both for his translations and his prose works. Parks lives in Verona with his wife and their three children.

© internationales literaturfestival berlin

Tim Parks online: www.timparks.com