ENVY IS AN EMOTION that grows slowly. Thanks to a series of fortuitous encounters and circumstances, a writer falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about a famous artist Julian Sax. He would like to meet Sax, but the great painter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable protective screen. The writer’s wife, the charming and sensuous Rossa, eventually takes him to Tony’s tea room in London, where Sax spends a few hours of each day, accompanied by his children, models and friends. The narrator begins to fear that his wife Rossa might succumb to the charm of this seductive man who attracts women, paints them and then discards them. In an unpredictable sequence of events, Elkann weaves a fascinating web, blending reality and fiction and drawing the reader into the lives of characters who will prove hard to forget.

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ALAIN ELKANN was born in New York in 1950. He is a regular contributor to various Italian newspapers and magazines, such as La Stampa, Nuovi Argomenti and Panta. A prize winning novelist, essayist and journalist, he has published over twenty books.

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TRANSLATED from the Italian by Alastair McEwen
Cover Illustration Hans Bellmer
ISBN (10) 1 901285 81 2
ISBN (13) 978 1 901285 81 9

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“With the lightest of touches, Elkann tells a tale of casual meetings, impressions, untold stories … and the possibility of a perfect murder which could exorcise the protagonist’s greatest fear.”
Corriere della Sera

“Envy is a brisk and abrasive novel and probably Elkann’s most autobiographical to date.”
Avvenire

“Light, graceful and seductively simple writing.”
La Stampa

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