British actress Keira Knightley was shooting Pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas when a friend mailed her the novel Silk, by the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco.

“He wrote a note saying, ‘I just read this. I think you’re going to love it,’ ” remembers the brunette beauty, who swept into Toronto earlier this month to promote two films at the film festival: Silk (which opened commercially yesterday) and Atonement (opening later this year). “And I did. Completely and absolutely adored it.

“I sent it on to a friend of mine, and this book managed to sort of go all over the world. It finally got lost in Slovakia when we tried to send it to a friend who was working over there. It got lost in the postal service,” she says with a giggle.

“It’s the most exquisitely written piece. Every word has been chosen carefully and is completely perfect,” says Knightley, who studied the classics and English literature at Esher College on the outskirts of London. “Its simplicity is astonishing. It’s erotic and completely heartbreaking.”

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