Tim Parks - Life

Life

Tim Parks was born in Manchester in 1954, the second son of the Rev Harold Parks and Joan (née McDowell). He grew up in Finchley, London and was educated at Cambridge University and Harvard. He has lived near Verona in Italy since 1981.

Parks is the author of several works of fiction (notably Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997) and non-fiction. His first novel, Tongues of Flame, won a Betty Trask Award in 1986.

He has also worked as a teacher and translator. Since relocating to Verona, Parks has taught Literary Translation and Technical Translation at the Independent University of Modern Languages (formerly the Free University of Languages and Communication) in nearby Milan.

His own translations include works by Alberto Moravia, Antonio Tabucchi, Italo Calvino and Roberto Calasso.

Parks has been nominated for the Booker prize twice. In 1997 he was shortlisted for his novel Europa, and in 2003, was longlisted for Judge Savage.

Tim Parks is married to Rita Baldassarre: the couple has three children.

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