Cleaver by Tim Parks

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Cleaver by Tim Parks

The book I selected to read was Cleaver by Tim parks. I was in the library looking

for a fiction novel and this cover struck me as very interesting. I took the book off the

shelf and read the back of it. I saw that it had many good reviews so I decided to give it a

try.

Tim Parks is the author of thirteen novels including Europa (1997) which was

listed for the Booker Prize, Destiny (1999), Judge Savage (2003) and Rapids (2005). His

most recent novel is Cleaver (2006), and his most recent publication The Fighter, a

collection of literary essays. He has written three non-fiction stories of life in northern

Italy. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard and in 1981 moved to Verona where he still

lives with his Italian wife and three children.

Tim Parks was born in Manchester, England in 1954. He teaches literary

translation at IULM University Milan and has written about local life in the Veneto in

Italian Neighbours (1992) and An Italian Education (1996). He has translated works by

several Italian writers, including Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Antonio Tabucchi and

Roberto Calasso. He has twice won the John Florio Prize for translation..

Tim Parks' many essays and occasional stories, mostly published in the New

Yorker and the New York Review of Books are collected in Adultery and Other

Diversions (1998) and Hell and Back: Essays (2001). A Season with Verona (2002), is a

story of a season spent following the Italian football club Hellas Verona and an extended

essay on the joys of collective illusion. Judge Savage (2003), is the story of

Crown Court Judge, Daniel Savage, who, even as he presides over the fate of others, is

witnessing his own life unravel. In 2005, Tim Parks published Rapids. A Novel (2005);

Medici Money (2005), a new history of the Medici family; and a new collection of short

fiction, Talking About It (2005). His latest novel is Cleaver (2006).

Cleaver’s own presidential moment has more of the feel of a fairy tale. “I put it to

you, Mr.

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