Silk: by Alessandro Baricco.

A whole new world opening up, and the charm of the perfect spouse can hardly compete with the thrill of the new world and new work and discoveries galore, especially when travel across the world to an entirely different land with very different culture is involved. Add a beautiful, enigmatic person (of the right gender) to this - and voila, you have a complex mystery of life, love, and more.

Here, it is about silk, introduction of silk from Orient to west, of attempting to grow sericulture in west by bringing cocoons all the way from Japan, while travel is by ship and all that such a travel entails.