Summer: a motionless and blinding light, the waves of the sea rippling with foam, the breath of the warm wind furrowed by the flight of a seagull, the song of the cicadas beyond the beach, children laying in the sand playing with castles and shells, the silhouettes of those we have loved for only one season. Summer lives on in the impressions preserved in our memories, in nostalgic and poignant reminiscences, because it’s not just a particular moment of the year: summer is an idea of happiness, a refuge, an ideal place of our youth. And so (after previous books addressing autumn, winter and spring), the author’s last journey draws on wistfulness, contemporary summers experienced as holidays, desires and dreams. And then he takes us back in time to rediscover the art, music and literature of summer throughout history: the violent appearances of the Greek gods, the arid and powerful Egyptian kingdom, the medieval saints’ festivals, the ripened and harvested crops, the torrid temperatures of the colonial world, the suffocating heat of cities. Yet summer is fleeting; it’s over as soon as we sense the first thunderstorms arriving from afar. What remains is a set of images of the best days of the year… or maybe even of our lives.

Alessandro Vanoli is an expert in Mediterranean history.