Hamish Hamilton secures Olivia Laing's 'queer love story'

Hamish Hamilton has signed the new novel by Olivia Laing, The Silver Book, tipped as "queer love story and a noirish thriller".

Publishing director Simon Prosser bought British and Commonwealth rights from Rebecca Carter at Rebecca Carter Literary. It will be published on November 6th 2025 in the UK. 

North American rights have already been acquired by Mitzi Angel, president at Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) through PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, and Italian rights at Il Saggiatore through Margaret Halton at PEW Literary, both for publication in autumn 2025.

The Silver Book is set in "the dream factory of cinema", Hamish Hamilton said. "It’s a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power."

The synopsis reads: "It is September 1974, and two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova, and a youthful – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs. He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism. But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising political tensions of Italy’s Years of Lead, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he did not intend."

Prosser said: "What a delight to work with Olivia at last, having known them for many years and long admired their lithe literary intelligence and quicksilver imagination. 

"The fluidity and range of their work is unique, as is the way they bring ethics and politics into all that they do – the thread which joins all of their books, including this one. The Silver Book is an exceptional novel – superbly constructed, perfectly told – which grips and excites from the very first page. Both a love story and a murder story, it is also a revelation – a journey into the hidden heart of Italian film, the set and costume departments of Rome’s Cinecittà movie studios in the politically-charged early 1970s. I love every moment of this book and feel very lucky to be publishing it."

Laing said: "I’ve been an admirer of Simon Prosser’s incredible list since I first started out as a book reviewer nearly 20 years ago. From Sontag to Sebald, Ali Smith to Deborah Levy, he has been a champion of originality, experiment and beautiful writing. It’s a real honour to join Hamish Hamilton and I’m so excited to have such a perfect home for The Silver Book."

An author and critic, Laing has written eight books, including The Lonely City (Picador), Everybody: A Book About Freedom and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Their books have been translated into 21 languages.