From the Pulitzer Prizewinning 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 EVENING STANDARD

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, includingDuccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements hed had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments.

Including beautifulfull-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 writers 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 landscapecurrent relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitudeand shed further light on the present world around us.

Praise for A Month in Siena

As exquisitely structured asThe Return, driven by desire, yearning, loss, illuminated by the kindness of strangers.A Month in Sienais a triumph.Peter Carey