The seasons of Rome

In the Seasons of Rome, beloved travel writer Paul Hofmann - a resident of Rome for more than thirty years - delves into the daily life of a city that is in so many ways larger than life. Over the course of a year, his journal navigates beyond the simple images of the tourist board and paints a rich portrait of place, revealing a fetish for Vatican gossip, the comings and goings of the gattare ("cat women" who care for the city's troops of stray felines), and the vagaries of the ever-volatile Roman government. In the eloquent style his readers have come to expect, Hofmann reflects upon the art of being Roman - the arte di arrangiarsi - which Romans themselves define as a knack for "arranging" things, finessing problems, coping with adversity by astute maneuver or simple procrastination, and evading difficulties through ambiguity. Nothing, their philosophy holds, is as serious as it may seem. Hofmann knows his territory, and as he wends his way through the city streets, stopping to chat with mail carriers and construction workers, or lingers over a cappuccino, letting his thoughts wander back into the city's history and half a century of personal experience there, one follows closely behind and listens to the voices of the city - past and present - rise up in his lucid prose. Hofmann speaks from the very heart of Rome.