A Month in Siena

FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR 'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardia n 'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith, Wall Street Journal , Books of the Year _______________________________________________ Matar was nineteen years old when his father was kidnapped. In the year following he found himself turning to art, particularly the great paintings of the Sienese School. They became a refuge and a way to think about the world outside the urgencies of the present. A quarter of a century later, having found no trace of his father, Matar finally visits the birthplace of those paintings. A Month in Siena is the encounter between the writer and the city. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of love, grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. _______________________________________________ 'A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief' Financial Times 'I can think of no better expression of the humane than this economical, modest, yet altogether breathtaking book' New Statesman, Books of the Year 'Bewitching, intensely moving' The Economist , Books of the Year

FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR 'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardia n 'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith, Wall Street Journal , Books of the Year _______________________________________________ Matar was nineteen years old when his father was kidnapped. In the year following he found himself turning to art, particularly the great paintings of the Sienese School. They became a refuge and a way to think about the world outside the urgencies of the present. A quarter of a century later, having found no trace of his father, Matar finally visits the birthplace of those paintings. A Month in Siena is the encounter between the writer and the city. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of love, grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. _______________________________________________ 'A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief' Financial Times 'I can think of no better expression of the humane than this economical, modest, yet altogether breathtaking book' New Statesman, Books of the Year 'Bewitching, intensely moving' The Economist , Books of the Year

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS After finishing his powerful memoir The Return , Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he'd had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer's life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape--current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude--and shed further light on the present world around us. Praise for A Month in Siena "As exquisitely structured as The Return , driven by desire, yearning, loss, illuminated by the kindness of strangers. A Month in Siena is a triumph." --Peter Carey

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS After finishing his powerful memoir The Return , Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he'd had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer's life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape--current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude--and shed further light on the present world around us. Praise for A Month in Siena "As exquisitely structured as The Return , driven by desire, yearning, loss, illuminated by the kindness of strangers. A Month in Siena is a triumph." --Peter Carey