A work of literary criticism, this text provides both an analysis of the literary style of some of the 20th century's leading writers as well as an insight into the art of translation. Tim Parks is a novelist and professional translator and seeks to show through detailed analysis what it really means to translate literary style. Combining literary and linguistic approaches, the book proceeds, through a series of interconnected chapters, to analyze Italian translations of the works of Lawrence, Woolf, Joyce, Beckett, Henry Green and Barbara Pym. The concluding chapter which examines six passages in English and Italian without stating at the outset which is the original language. The aim is to show how a study of the differences between the two texts leads very quickly to an awareness of which was the original and of what was the essential problem it posed for the translator. Authors presented in the text include: Hemingway, Rosetta Loy, Antonio Tabucchi, Jack Kerouac, Alberto Moravia and Roberto Calasso. The aim of the book is to savour the extent to which any text is driven by the language in which it is written, even when it departs from standard usage, when it seeks to achieve the status of literature.