A very slim, highly stylised novel set in nineteenth-century Europe and Japan, Silk follows Hervé Joncour, a French silkworm trader who travels repeatedly to Japan in search of healthy eggs during a period of disease and political instability.

On paper, almost nothing happens: journeys, transactions, a marriage, an obsession. But Baricco turns that spareness into the whole atmosphere of the book. It reads less like a conventional historical novel than a controlled reverie about distance, erotic projection, repetition, and the strange way desire attaches itself to what cannot quite be possessed or even fully known.

Its appeal is partly formal. The prose is pared back, rhythmic, faintly fable-like, and the book has long had crossover life as the sort of literary novella people read for both content and mood.

Good for the Fitzroy pool, sunshine abundant.