Two places, one a country, and one a city, have recently been in the news. And the two are linked by a curious fact of literary history.

What fact is that?

No, that's too much to ask. So I will first tell you that fact. The literary work that has come to be regarded as the national epic of that recently-in-the-news country was composed by a man who, it is widely believed, spent his last years in  that recently-in-the-news city, and that  city is not the capital of that country, but of another country. The quiz requires you to name that literary work and its author, the city in which he is said to have spent his last years, and the country of which that work is considered to be the national epic. 

 Answers to be posted on Friday or Saturday (whichever comes first).

[P. S.: Receipt of a postcard yesterday from a friend now travelling for two weeks in sunny southern Italy prompted this quiz. He'd been making his way slowly to Naples, had stopped for a brief rustication in Avellino, but when he fully took in the news of what has been going on in Naples, of how  that fabled Parthenopean port, all pickpockets and pasta,  had become -- one hopes temporarily -- a vast camorra-caused garbage dump, a regular Rifiutopoli, he changed his plans, and in the postcard he announced he'd instead turn northward. The next postcard I receive is likely to have a  view  of the Florentine skyline at sunset, or of the Ponte Vecchio and the corridoio vasariano in broad daylight, or of the Boboli Gardens at dewy dawn, and any one of those scenes, if that traveller up the boot  plays his postcards right -- will trigger a tricky quiz similar to this one.]