Hisham Matar won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for The Return, the story of his search for his father, who’d been kidnapped and presumably killed by the Libyan government. His first novel, In the Country of Men, won several recognitions and awards. Virtually every book he writes wins awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel, My Friends, in 2025.
There’s one exception, and it’s a gem of a story.
In 2014 or 2015, Matar traveled to Siena, Italy, as something of a retreat or rest. He was still recovering from the intensity of writing The Return, not to mention the number of widespread accolades it received. Siena was meant to be a respite, and it was. He describes that respite in A Month in Siena, a non-fiction work about his own life, the churches in the town, and the artwork contained in those churches and the local museum.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Some Wednesday Readings
The Rise of AI Book Slop – Tim Challies.
The shame of Britain – Sebastian Milbank at The Critic Magazine.
Three Speeches That Savid the Union: Clay, Calhoun and Webster and the Crisis of 1850 by Peter Charles Hoffer – book review by Codie Eash at Emerging Civil War.
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