In Italy : Venice, Rome and Beyond

In Italy: Venice, Rome and Beyond is a collection of personal essays by poet and New Yorker contributor Cynthia Zarin, exploring four Italian settings -- Venice, Rome, Assisi, and Santa Maria Maggiore -- through lyrical, closely observed prose.

Wandering through places like the Venice Biennale, the island of San Michele, the Piazza di Spagna, and the Doria Pamphili gardens, Zarin captures both the specific detail of each place and the larger experience of being a visitor, and repeat visitor, to Italy.

The result is a meditative, dreamlike book about looking closely and being pleasurably lost in a place one keeps returning to.