The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth Rome metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories "" A delectable, sun-washed treat . . . the stories have the beating heart of the city itself, a place of magnificent decay and vibrant, varied life."" Vogue In, The Boundary, one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker's daughter, who nurses a wound from her family's immigrant past. In, P's Parties, a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend's yearly birthday gathering until the husband crosses a line. And in, The Steps, on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy's capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing city- visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.