A Month in Siena

Critics Review

• 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