A Month in Siena

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A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar: Episode 5

A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar, Episode 5

As the month comes to an end, Matar reflects on how his time there has changed his view.

As his time in Siena draws to a close, Matar reflects on what he has seen and how it has given him a renewed feeling of hope.  He resolves to return to Siena as soon as possible.

When Hisham Matar was nineteen years old he came across the Sienese School of painting for the first time. In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father. the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years that followed, his feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.

A Month in Siena is the encounter, 25 years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It's a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It's also an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition. 

'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

In episode 5, the time has come to leave Siena, but it is not long before Hisham Matar is planning his next visit.  He reflects on how this trip has changed his view on many things.


Written by Hisham Matar
Read by Khalid Abdalla
Abridged by Jill Waters and Jonquil Panting
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4

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Hisham Matar's account of a trip to the city whose painters so influenced his view of art.

Book of the Week. With a keen interest in the paintings of the Sienese Scool, Hisham Matar makes a month-long trip to Siena, the city he has worshipped from afar.

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