pickI loved this! Matar becomes fascinated by the Sienese school of painting and decides to spend a month indulging in this fascination. It‘s a beautifully quiet book, part memoir, philosophy, travelogue and art history that I didn‘t know I needed or wanted so badly.
pickA really gorgeous, personal art-history-slash-memoir about the time the writer spent looking at Sienese art. I was expecting to find his life boring and be like ‘please get to the art‘ but I thought they married together beautifully. Particularly fascinating to get a non-Christian perspective from a writer from a Muslim country who loves renaissance biblical art.
#wintergames2020 #merryreaders @Clwojick +16
Only love and art can do this: only inside a book or in front of a painting can one truly be let into another's perspective. It has always struck me as a paradox how in the solitary arts there is something intimately communal.
This one page is better than the entire 400 plus pages of The Goldfinch
@ShyBookOwl #ScavengerSaturday Round 5 #Bookhunt
I loved Siena when I went there with my parents and I would love to take my husband there too. I would love an immersive trip of the sort Matar does. His writing on art is sublime.
pickIt's a beautiful, tiny memoir and love letter to a city and its art. Matar writes with the confidence of a seasoned writer but with the excitement of a toddler reaching for a favorite sweet. It is evident, he found himself in the middle of his own personal Sienese heaven. It is a wonderful book for lovers of art and art history.
Read the full review at https://onthebl.org/2020/04/17/a-month-in-siena-by-hisham-matar/
pickThis is an exquisite small book, perfect isolation reading. I loved being in Siena with Hisham Matar. Every page has a beautiful thought to reflect on but it‘s also easy company with great art & new friends. He‘s such a lucid writer. I enjoyed The Return but found this even more moving. Highly recommended.
A Month in Siena | 
