麻豆约拍

When Hisham Matar was 19, 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,

鈥淪iena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem鈥�.

25 years later, this is the encounter 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.

Written by Hisham Matar.

Omnibus of five parts abridged by Jill Waters and Jonquil Panting.

Read by Khalid Abdalla

Producer: Jill Waters

A Waters Company production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4 first broadcast in July 2020.

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