Tim Parks is the author of fourteen novels, including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, Sex Is Forbidden and, most recently, Painting Death, all of which have been translated into many languages. As well as being a novelist and the author of several works of non-fiction, Tim is the acclaimed translator of books by Moravia, Calvino, Machiavelli and other Italian writers. He's a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.

How can other people like the books we don't like? What benefit can we get from rereading a work? Can we read better? If so, how? These and many other questions, ranging from the field of writing to that of reading and translation, are given a comprehensive answer in a series of stimulating and challenging literary essays that will be a perfect read for all book explorers and practitioners of the pen.

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 - gives us a book to enjoy, savour and, most importantly, reread.

There are many ways of touring the land that Italians, following Dante, call il bel paese, and Parks is as perceptive a guide as could be wished.

"[an] active and thought-provoking collection of writing about reading"