About the book, from the publisher:
Anthony Doerr has received many awards -- from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins.
Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats -- the chroniclers of Rome who came before him -- and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.
This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craft -- the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences.
Among the praise for Four Seasons in Rome:
Read an excerpt from Four Seasons in Rome, and learn more about the book at the author's website."A passionate reflection about learning to see that celebrates both the foreign and familiar."
—Entertainment Weekly"Anthony Doerr is dazzling in this book, in the way he celebrates the joys as well as the pain of being a parent and in love, being a writer and being in Rome, reminding us that certain experiences never grow stale when they are expressed through the fresh eyes of a real writer."
"I loved this book which, in turn, made me laugh and weep at the relentless twins, Owen and Henry, who never sleep, the descriptions of Rome, the clouds, the light -- especially the light -- the people Doerr meets on the street, again the light, Pliny, Jonah's feet dangling from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Shauna's steadfastness, Doerr's generous and intelligent spirit, his discerning eye and his perfect prose. Complimenti!"
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
"Doerr's journal is a love letter written with the ear of a musician, the sensibility of a Buddha, the heart of an inamorato. Rome is the chosen beloved, but Doerr's true subject is writing."
—Sandra Cisneros, author of Caramelo
—Lily Tuck, author of Interviewing Matisse
"Anthony Doerr found himself in the perfect Eternal City with the eternal Paternal Problem: how to care for two beautiful newborn twins while still doing his work as a writer and student and observer. The result is a funny, precise, touching account of cultural barricades crossed and fatherly exhaustions overcome; a story of the universalities of parenting and the specificities of Roman life that will lift the heart of every parent and delight the mind of every lover of Italy."
—Adam Gopnik, author of Through the Children's Gate and From Paris to the Moon
Anthony Doerr's other books are The Shell Collector and About Grace. The Shell Collector, a volume of eight short stories, was published in 2002 and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, two O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Ohioana Book Award. It was a New York Times Notable Book and an American Library Association Book of the Year. About Grace, a novel, was named a ‘Best Book of 2004’ by the Washington Post, won the Ohioana Book Award again, and was a finalist for the PEN USA fiction award. In 2007, the British literary magazine Granta placed Doerr on its list of 21 Best Young American novelists.
Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho. From 2007 to 2010, he will be the Writer-in-Residence for the State of Idaho.
--Marshal Zeringue
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