In Italy

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.

Cynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Ada Poems and Orbit, as well five books for children and two essay collections, Two Cities and An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History. Her honours include a Guggenheim Memorial Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award in Literature, the Peter B. Lavan Award, an Ingram Merrill Award for Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. A longtime contributor to the New Yorker, Zarin teaches at Yale University. She lives in New York City.