Handful of Arrows

One night in Buenos Aires, during the filming of Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola told Maria Gainza, 'An artist comes into the world with a quiver of golden arrows' - to be shot all in one go in youth, or slowly across an entire lifetime.A Handful of Arrows is a masterpiece of miniatures, a collection of glimpses into the lives of artists: in it, you'll find a watercolour by Cezanne stolen from a Buenos Aires museum, a walk along Thoreau's Walden Pond, the cosmopolitan life and memories of sculptor Maria Simon, the travels of painter Francis Hopkinson and his assistant Moon in Mexico, a cursed painting by Titian - and, flickering in and out of view, an elusive writer and critic named Maria Gainza.Full of gems and curiosities, and straddling the line between fiction and essay, Maria Gainza's luminous book finds new ways of understanding art and history, breaking down genre barriers and inviting readers into a rich, kaleidoscopic world.