Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-45% $9.99$9.99
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$6.98$6.98
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Jenson Books Inc
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
Audible sample Sample
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy Paperback – September 2, 1997
Purchase options and add-ons
“This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today
For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special!
More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateSeptember 2, 1997
- Dimensions5.23 x 0.78 x 8.01 inches
- ISBN-100767900383
- ISBN-13978-0767900386
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Bella Tuscany | In Tuscany | A Year in the World | Every Day in Tuscany | The Tuscan Sun Cookbook | Women in Sunlight | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Customer Reviews |
4.3 out of 5 stars
657
|
4.5 out of 5 stars
151
|
4.2 out of 5 stars
201
|
4.4 out of 5 stars
427
|
4.7 out of 5 stars
679
|
4.2 out of 5 stars
3,436
|
Price | $11.93$11.93 | $20.19$20.19 | $13.44$13.44 | $12.75$12.75 | $22.91$22.91 | $13.64$13.64 |
Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. | A lavishly illustrated ode to the joys of Tuscany’s people, food, landscapes, and art. | With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. | Frances Mayes opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. She brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. | This cuisine transports, comforts, entices, and speaks to the friendly, genuine, and improvisational spirit of Tuscan life. | The story of four American strangers who bond in Italy and change their lives over the course of an exceptional year. |
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy. loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it's so delicious, read it first yourself."
—USA Today
"Irresistible...a sensous book for a sensous countryside."
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“An intense celebration of what [Mayes] calls ‘the voluptuousness of Italian life’ . . . appealing and very vivid . . . [The] book seems like the kind of thing you’d tuck into a picnic basket on an August day . . . or better yet, keep handy on the bedside table in the depths of January.”
—New York Times Book Review
"Armchair travel at its most enticing."
—Booklist
“Mayes [has] perfect vision. . . . I do not doubt that centuries form now, whoever lives in Bramasole will one day uncover bits of pottery used at Mayes’ table. She has, by the sweat of her brow and the strength of her vision, become a layer in the history of this place.”
—Los Angeles Times
"After buying a rundown villa in rural Tuscany, the American author Frances Mayes moves to Cortona to renovate the property and learn more about the Italian dolce vita. Her bestselling memoir on her time there paints a vivid description of the town, the people and the lush surrounding countryside of rolling hills and vineyards. A poet and a gourmet cook, Mayes includes a number of chapters on food, replete with classic Italian recipes to further whet the appetite."
—Irish Times
From the Back Cover
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In "Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole. It is tall, square, and apricot-colored with faded green shutters, ancient tile roof, and an iron balcony on the second level, where ladies might have sat with their fans to watch some spectacle below. But below, overgrown briars, tangles of roses, and knee-high weeds run rampant. The balcony faces southeast, looking into a deep valley, then into the Tuscan Apennines. When it rains or when the light changes, the facade of the house turns gold, sienna, ocher; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun. In places where the stucco has fallen away, rugged stone shows what the exterior once was. The house rises above a strada bianca, a road white with pebbles, on a terraced slab of hillside covered with fruit and olive trees. Bramasole: from bramare, to yearn for, and sole, sun: something that yearns for the sun, and yes, I do.
The family wisdom runs strongly against this decision. My mother has said ‘‘Ridiculous,’’ with her certain and forceful stress on the second syllable, ‘‘RiDICulous,’’ and my sisters, although excited, fear I am eighteen, about to run off with a sailor in the family car. I quietly have my own doubts. The upright seats in the notaio’s outer office don’t help. Through my thin white linen dress, spiky horsehairs pierce me every time I shift, which is often in the hundred-degree waiting room. I look over to see what Ed is writing on the back of a receipt: Parmesan, salami, coffee, bread. How can he? Finally, the signora opens her door and her torrential Italian flows over us.
The notaio is nothing like a notary; she’s the legal person who conducts real-estate transactions in Italy. Ours, Signora Mantucci, is a small, fierce Sicilian woman with thick tinted glasses that enlarge her green eyes. She talks faster than any human I have ever heard. She reads long laws aloud. I thought all Italian was mellifluous; she makes it sound like rocks crashing down a chute. Ed looks at her raptly; I know he’s in thrall to the sound of her voice. The owner, Dr. Carta, suddenly thinks he has asked too little; he must have, since we have agreed to buy it. We think his price is exorbitant. We know his price is exorbitant. The Sicilian doesn’t pause; she will not be interrupted by anyone except by Giuseppe from the bar downstairs, who suddenly swings open the dark doors, tray aloft, and seems surprised to see his Americani customers sitting there almost cross-eyed in confusion. He brings the signora her midmorning thimble of espresso, which she downs in a gulp, hardly pausing. The owner expects to claim that the house cost one amount while it really cost much more. ‘‘That is just the way it’s done,’’ he insists. ‘‘No one is fool enough to declare the real value.’’ He proposes we bring one check to the notaio’s office, then pass him ten smaller checks literally under the table.
Anselmo Martini, our agent, shrugs.
Ian, the English estate agent we hired to help with translation, shrugs also.
Dr. Carta concludes, ‘‘You Americans! You take things so seriously. And, per favore, date the checks at one-week intervals so the bank isn’t alerted to large sums.’’
Was that the same bank I know, whose sloe-eyed teller languidly conducts a transaction every fifteen minutes, between smokes and telephone calls? The signora comes to an abrupt halt, scrambles the papers into a folder and stands up. We are to come back when the money and papers are ready.
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (September 2, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0767900383
- ISBN-13 : 978-0767900386
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.23 x 0.78 x 8.01 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #20,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34 in Travelogues & Travel Essays
- #35 in general Italy Travel Guides
- #768 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Frances Mayes's new novel A GREAT MARRIAGE (2024) tells the story of spirited Dara Willcox, a runaway bride, and of Austin Clarke, whose life must be reinvented after a shattering event. The aftershocks rattle the lives of three generations of women and men, causing an examination of the great mystery ride that is marriage and what it means when it's great, good, or time for the end.
(2023) PASTA VELOCE, 100 fast pasta recipes, was published, following (2020) ALWAYS ITALY, an intensive guide to the twenty regions of Italy. This won the SATWF Lowell Thomas Gold Medal Award, the Best Travel Book from NA Travel Journalists' Association, and for the German edition, The ITB Berlin Book Award.
Always attuned to the lure of travel and the equal pull of home, Frances explores both interests in A PLACE IN THE WORLD: FINDING THE MEANING OF HOME (2022). While A GREAT MARRIAGE explores "the unguessable country of marriage," (Angela Carter), A PLACE IN THE WORLD explores the equally unguessable meaning of home.
The novel WOMEN IN SUNLIGHT (2018) delves into possibilities and perceived impossibilities women face as they grow older. Three southern women become friends and decide to leap out of what is forecast for them and take on life in Italy. They've all had their share of loss but this is their year. Frances wrote the novel as a tribute to all the women she has met who have traveled to a foreign country in quest of enlightenment. The novel is in preproduction as a film by Water's End.
As is obvious from the above, Frances has a passionate interest in travel and houses. When she saw Bramasole, a neglected, 250-year-old Tuscan villa nestled in terraced olive groves, it was fate. Out of that instant infatuation came several international bestsellers: UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 2 1/2 years. In succession came other memoirs: BELLA TUSCANY, EVERY DAY IN TUSCANY, and then three collaborations with her husband, poet Edward Mayes: IN TUSCANY, BRINGING TUSCANY HOME, and THE TUSCAN SUN COOKBOOK, "one of the best Italian cookbooks of all time." (Forbes) All are about taking chances, living in Italy, loving and renovating an old Italian villa, and the "voluptuousness of Italian life." The film UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, starring Diane Lane as Frances, was released in 2003 and still enjoys world-wide popularity.
Frances finds that writing about travel doubles the pleasures of each. Her SEE YOU IN THE PIAZZA, travels to little-known places in Italy, and the travel memoir A YEAR IN THE WORLD: JOURNEYS OF A PASSIONATE TRAVELER examine the possibilities of feeling at home in a foreign country. Working with photographer Steven Rothfeld, she published SHRINES: IMAGES OF ITALIAN WORSHIP.
Coming from deep southern roots, Frances based her first novel, SWAN, a family saga, in her hometown, Fitzgerald, Georgia. UNDER MAGNOLIA, a memoir of her first twenty years, unwittingly caused the revelation of family secrets, one of which inspired THE GREAT MARRIAGE.
These books have been translated into over fifty foreign editions. Honorary citizen of Cortona and Arezzo, Frances has been awarded the Marco d'Oro prize, and the Premio Casato Prime Donne for a major contribution in the field of letters. She is a NEA Fellowship and a member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
Formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, she directed The Poetry Center and chaired the Department of Creative Writing. Frances's first love is poetry. Prior to turning to prose, she was a widely published poet. Her books include: SUNDAY IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, AFTER SUCH PLEASURES, THE ARTS OF FIRE, HOURS, THE BOOK OF SUMMER and EX VOTO. From her teaching came THE DISCOVERY OF POETRY: A FIELD GUIDE TO READING AND WRITING POEMS.
Frances devotes herself to writing, traveling, and various restoration projects. She and her husband live in North Carolina and Cortona, Italy.
"Tuscany may have found its own bard in Frances Mayes."
-- The New York Times
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Top reviews from other countries
It is about writers experience of buying a villa in Cortona. The struggles she faced along with the beauty of this city.
Writer explained each part of the Cortona and around it vividly. Can imagine you are in her place experiencing it for the first time.
Must read