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Hotel Milano

Booker shortlisted author of Europa

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Hotel Milano

By: Tim Parks
Narrated by: Sean Baker
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From the bestselling writer of Italian Ways, Europa and The Hero's Way, a story set during the first days of lockdown in Europe, about the unexpected kindness of strangers and one man's emotional reckoning.

Milan, 2020. Drawn abruptly from his reclusive life in London for a friend's funeral, Frank finds himself in the eye of a pandemic he had barely registered on the news. From the relative comfort of his balcony at Hotel Milano, he surveys the train station across the piazza, seeing the mad dash for the last trains, hearing the sirens and watching the police stop people in the street. He feels himself remote from it all.

Then, one night, the sound of a child's footsteps leads him to discover a family sheltering secretly above him: a family who need his help. As the days pass, this reserved and difficult man begins to open himself to others. Faced with the task of saving a life, he must also take stock of his own.

©2023 Tim Parks (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature
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Critic Reviews

Hotel Milano is one of Tim Parks' most engaging and satisfying books
Tim Parks, a long-time resident in Italy, is an accomplished writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and this deft and affecting short novel combines his skills
A compelling mix of emotional introspection and pressing drama
Excellent and quietly devastating... While recent pandemic novels such as Sarah Hall's Burntcoat and Sarah Moss's The Fell gave us the claustrophobia and forced intimacy of the pandemic, Hotel Milano comes closest to evoking what it was really like to watch the world be redrawn in real time
Parks writes with an appealing wry elegance, and his quirky, erudite narrator finally finds solace not so much in the grand themes of European culture as in a shredded balloon stuck in a tree or the yellow beak of a blackbird
All stars
Most relevant
Having lived through Covid and Lock down all the memories came flooding back. Turning 70 in 2020 I endured a political driven nightmare. Living close to the beach in Sydney I was prevented from swimming as this was seen as a threat to my life. Social distancing, wearing masks and forced to sanitise my hands at every juncture proved futile, yet psychologically damaging. Tim Parks re-creation of the beginning of the nightmare in Italy is a reminder of what the political elite can enforce on its citizens
Better to die on ones feet. Sweden had a better model to follow. Well written.

Excellent, but not what I expected.

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Hotel Milano by Tim Parks (January 19 2023). 75 year old Frank visits Milan to attend a funeral for a former boss. Once there, he finds hi self daughter in the early lock down days ask the COVID pandemic hit. He also find a a family sheltered in the hotel causing him to consider his values and his life. Good book.

Well Written

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