by Hisham Matar
First published 2019
Hisham Matar discovered Sienese painting at nineteen, just as his father vanished and his world collapsed. The medieval art offered him hope during his darkest period. For twenty-five years, Siena held sacred meaning for him, like Mecca holds for pilgrims. Now Matar finally travels to the Italian city he has revered from a distance. He walks its streets and studies the paintings that sustained him. The book follows his month-long stay as he encounters the actual place behind his decades of imagination. Matar examines how art shapes our inner lives during times of loss. He considers what happens when we finally reach the destinations we have idealized. The city becomes a lens through which he explores his relationship with beauty, absence, and the power of artistic vision to carry us through suffering.
Genres: art, literary-fiction, biography-memoir, cultural-studies
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, personal-journey
Setting: Italy, Siena
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
128 pages · Hardcover · Viking