Dark Mysteries and Glittery Illusions in Olivia Laing's The Silver Book

"In 1975 on a scrappy patch of coast a short drive from Rome, Pier Paolo Pasolini was bludgeoned to death - the gory climax to a raging, passionate career of film and poetry. Olivia Laing's new fever-dream of a novel traces the high-strung build-up to that murder, amid the pressure cooker of Italy's anni di piombo , an era of political and social turmoil, bombings, kidnappings and bloodshed."

"The Silver Book delves behind the scenes of their production at Rome's Cinecittà studios, a sorcerer's den of tricks and illusions whose ringleader is the late Danilo Donati, the costume and set designer responsible for some of cinema's most ingenious flights of imagination. His improvised creations - fluttering black bin-bags for Venice canal water, cheap lace curtains safety-pinned into regal robes, boiled sweets glued together as Roman mosaics - won him handfuls of awards during his lifetime, including two Oscars."

"In Laing's telling, Donati falls fatefully in love with a young English drifter who becomes the unwitting accelerant to an already combustible moment, tangled in murky conspiracies he's unable to fully grasp. It's a transportive, hot-blooded book, flooded by Roman light, sticky heat and scooter exhaust - and a potent tribute to the fierce, uncompromising vision of Pasolini, whose dark warnings have come home to roost 50 years later."

In 1975 on a patch of coast near Rome, Pier Paolo Pasolini was bludgeoned to death, ending a passionate career in film and poetry. A feverish fictional reconstruction traces the tense lead-up to that murder amid Italy's anni di piombo, an era of bombings, kidnappings and political violence. Two contrasting films emerged that year: Fellini's fantastical Casanova and Pasolini's final feature Salò, a fable of fascism. The account moves behind the scenes at Cinecittà and centers on Danilo Donati, a resourceful costume and set designer whose improvised materials created astonishing cinematic illusions and won him major awards. A young English drifter becomes entwined in Donati's life and in murky conspiracies as tensions escalate.

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