A Month in Siena

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 *

Hisham Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return was the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, Frances Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche and Germany's Geschwister Scholl Prize, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, the Costa Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Awards. He is also the author of the novels In the Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Anatomy of a Disappearance, and his most recent book is A Month in Siena. Matar is a Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. His work has been translated into over thirty languages.