A Time in Rome

By Elizabeth Bowen,

Book cover of A Time in Rome

Book description

Elizabeth Bowen's account of a time spent in Rome is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city - its history, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities and speculates…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Time in Rome as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book is a treasure-trove of wise and gorgeous sentences—like, “Knowledge of Rome must be physical, sweated into the system, worked up into the brain through the thinning shoe-leather. Substantiality comes through touch and smell, and taste, the tastes of different dusts.”

Like the Eternal City, A Time in Rome by the Irish-British novelist Elizabeth Bowen doesn’t fit into tidy categories.

Is it a guidebook to the city? Is it a memoir? Is it a history of Rome? Yes and no.

Though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, I love it. It’s a perfect book for…

From Scott's list on finding the meaning of life in Rome.

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