Adultery and Other Diversions

In Adultery and Other Diversions, Tim Parks seeks, as he puts it, to “dramatize the intimate relation between reflections that are timeless and the ongoing story of our lives.” He succeeds magnificently. Whether his focus is adultery, marriage, his relationship with his father, ghosts, his children, Italian soccer mania, or his work as a renowned writer and translator, Parks writes with astonishing clarity and intensity. He is one of a handful of writers who can capture the drama of our lives—erratic pulse and all—and offer a perspective by which that drama might be illuminated. Intimate, absorbing, unsparing but always compassionate, the thirteen “diversions” in Adultery and Other Diversions—three of which have appeared in The New Yorker—reflect the vagaries of the human heart and a brilliant writer’s engagement with them.

Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including the best-selling Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. His novels include Europa which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  His essays have appeared in the The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, for which he blogs. Tim Park is also a renowned translator. He lives in Italy.