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Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome

October 12, 2006

Leonard Barkan discusses Satyr Square, which is part memoir, part literary criticism, part culinary and aesthetic travelogue, and overall a poignant and hilarious narrative about an American professor spending a magical year in Rome.

A scarred veteran of academic culture wars, Leonard Barkan is at first hungry, lonely, and uncertain of his intellectual mission. But soon he is appointed unofficial mascot of an eccentric community of gastronomes, becomes virtually bilingual, and falls in love. As the year progresses, he finds his voice as a writer, loses his lover, and returns definitively to America. His book is the celebration of a life lived in the uncanny spaces where art and real people intersect.

WGBH
Boston Athenaeum
Image of Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome
Author: Leonard Barkan
Publisher: Northwestern University Press (2008)
Binding: Paperback, 290 pages
Image of Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture
Author: Professor Leonard Barkan
Publisher: Yale University Press (2001)
Binding: Paperback, 464 pages