From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on four Italian spaces.

Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ – a traveller moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her we see anew the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili.

Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice, Rome, Assisi and Santa Maria Maggiore vividly to life for the reader.

‘These pieces induce a comparable sense of being pleasurably lost, of wanting to live imperfectly in the present tense.’ Observer

‘A collection of dreamy, meandering essays … there’s so much to savour in its pages.’ Idler

‘Zarin’s attention to details pulls you into the pages and her articulation of the emotional landscapes dazzles you. A perfect escape from January.’ The Gloss

‘Zarin writes with tenderness and poetry on the experience of of being a visitor, and re-visitor, to these Italian cities. . . Some of these essays are like suitcases packed carefully but dreamily, and reveal how helplessly one is oneself wherever we go, Zarin’s histories and relationships offer as much chiaroscuro as the Italian sun and stone.’ Leanne Shapton

‘An inspiring whirligig of impressions, reflections and memories.’ Esther Kinsky

‘Stunningly lyrical.’ André Aciman