'A heaert-breaking love story... a stylistic tour de force, a literary gem of bewitching power.' - Sunday Times
'Mesmerising and starkly beautiful.' - Observer
'Deeply moving... A delicately crafted love story and an anatomy of desire.' - Guardian
With a new translation by Ann Goldstein
This sensual and hypnotic novel tells a story of adventure and obsession. In 1861 French silkworm merchant Hervé Joncour travels to Japan, where he encounters the mysterious Hara Kei. He develops a painful longing for Kei's beautiful concubine - but they cannot touch; they do not even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But the moment he does, Joncour is enslaved.
Subtle, tender and surprising, Silk is an evocative tale of erotic possession.
"An intensely powerful and perceptive drama of the deepest human desires... One of the most astonishing and moving novels I have ever read." - Daily elegraph
"Haunting and delicately erotic." - Mail on Sunday
