Author: Alessandro Baricco
This startling, sensual, hypnotically compelling novel tells a story of adventure, sexual enthrallment, and a love so powerful that it unhinges a man's life. The year is 1861. Herve Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who combs the known world for their gemlike eggs. Then circumstances compel him to travel farther, beyond the edge of the known to a country that is legendary for the quality of its silk and its implacable hostility to foreigners: Japan.
There, in the court of an enigmatic nobleman, Joncour meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But in the moment he does, Joncour is possessed. The same spell will envelop anyone who reads Silk, a work that has the compression of a fable, the evocative detail of the greatest historical fiction, and the devastating erotic force of a dream.
