A Month in Siena
Published on 17. October 2019
Book
Hardback
128 pages
978-0-241-40950-3 (ISBN)
Description
FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR
'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith
'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardian
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When Hisham Matar was nineteen years old he came across the Sienese School of painting for the first time. In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years since then, Matar's feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.
A Month in Siena is the encounter, twenty-five years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It is a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition.
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'Bewitching . . . Meditating on art, history and the relationship between them, this is both a portrait of a city and an affirmation of life's quiet dignities in the face of loss' The Economist, Books of the Year
'An exquisite, deeply affecting book' Evening Standard
'A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief' Financial Times
'Breathtaking' New Statesman
'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith
'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardian
____________________________________
When Hisham Matar was nineteen years old he came across the Sienese School of painting for the first time. In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years since then, Matar's feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.
A Month in Siena is the encounter, twenty-five years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It is a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition.
____________________________________
'Bewitching . . . Meditating on art, history and the relationship between them, this is both a portrait of a city and an affirmation of life's quiet dignities in the face of loss' The Economist, Books of the Year
'An exquisite, deeply affecting book' Evening Standard
'A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief' Financial Times
'Breathtaking' New Statesman
Reviews / Votes
An intensely moving book, at once an affirmation of life's quiet dignities in the face of loss and a portrait of a city that comes to stand for all cities * The Economist * This slim, beautifully produced book, sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss. Matar's prose is exquisitely measured and precise - not unlike one of the paintings from the Sienese school that he has admired for so many years * PD Smith, Guardian * This book tells us much about the extraordinary power of art to inspire * Literary Review * What a jewel this is, driven by desire, grief, yearning loss, illuminated by hope, the kindness of strangers continually making tribute to the delicacy and grace of the Arab home the author lost so many years ago * Peter Carey, The Australian, Books of the Year * A fluid series of meditations on the big questions of life, on love, faith, time and on the nature and purpose of art, the influence of architecture and, most important of all to this author, grief, mourning and memory * Spectator * Mingles insightful and often moving art history with frank personal recollection in a way that reminds us of the communality we share not only with our contemporaries, but with all historical epochs. I can think of no better expression of the humane than this economical, modest, yet altogether breathtaking book * New Statesman * Hisham Matar is a brilliant narrative architect and prose stylist, his pared-down approach and measured pace a striking complement to the emotional tumult of his material * Wall Street Journal * What interests him in this art is the human knowledge the painter is trying to convey. The description is exact and graceful, as Matar's prose tends to be * New York Times, 11 New Books We Recommend This Week * A Month in Siena bears all the hallmarks of Matar's writing: it is exquisitely constructed and the use of language is precise and delicately nuanced without pretension. And there is a deceptive simplicity to his endeavour: to look at art. What emerges is an altogether more complex philosophical exploration of death, love, art, relationships and time * Financial Times * A deeply moving, engrossing book. Written in elegant, concise prose, it is a remarkable mediation on life, loss, mourning, exile, friendship and the power of art * Wall Street Journal * Hisham Matar has the quality all historians - of the world and the self - most need: he knows how to stand back and let the past speak * Hilary Mantel * A thing of beauty and wisdom * Monocle * A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief * Financial Times * An exquisite, deeply affecting book * Evening Standard * Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings * Zadie Smith * Bewitching . . . Meditating on art, history and the relationship between them, this is both a portrait of a city and an affirmation of life's quiet dignities in the face of loss * The Economist, Books of the Year *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 204 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
350 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-40950-3 (9780241409503)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents and spent his childhood first in Tripoli and then in Cairo. He is the author of two novels, In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance, and a work of non-fiction, The Return. In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the National Critics Book Circle Award in the US and won six international literary awards. The Return won a Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Folio Prize and was shortlisted for many other awards including the Baillie Gifford Prize. Hisham Matar lives in London.