In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, raising a family of three children. He has written fourteen novels including ‘Europa’ (shortlisted for the Booker prize), ‘Destiny’, ‘Cleaver’, ‘Sex is Forbidden’ and, most recently, ‘Painting Death’, all of them published in half a dozen countries.
A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, his many essays are collected in Hell and Back and The Fighter. Over the last three years he has been publishing a series of blogs on writing, reading, translation and the like in the New York Review online.
Leopardi's Italians, then and now
In 1826 prolific poet, essayist, and philosopher, Giacomo Leopardi wrote his ‘Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl'italiani’ (Discourse on the present state of morals in Italian) where he elaborately reasoned his position on the background to Italian national character. In this 2014 lecture, Tim Parks will offer a unique insight into social behaviour, religion, cultural values and education in Italy and consider how much has changed since Leopardi’s writings during the Enlightenment and reflect upon how much has remained the same.
‘Every Italian is more or less equally honoured and dishonoured’
‘In Italy, sooner or later, everyone has to take the plunge, arm themselves and join the fray’.
Giacomo Leopardi
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