Description
Book SynopsisAmid wars, failed revolutions and the shifting of frontiers, the bit-part players often have the best tales to tell - an astonishing, genre-blurring travelogue from Italian master Claudio Magris.
In the tiny borderlands of Istria and Italy, from the forests of Monte Nevoso, to the hidden valleys of the Tyrol, to a Trieste café, Microcosms pieces together a mosaic of stories - comic, tragic, picaresque, nostalgic - from life's minor characters. Their worlds might be small, but they are far from minimalist: in them flashes the great, the meaningful, the unrepeatable significance of every existence.
Trade ReviewA haunting amalgam of travelogue, autobiography and impressionist sketch book -- Jonathan Keates * Literary Review *
Claudio Magris is engaged on a seductively exciting journey of the imagination, which enriches and enthrals -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Microcosms, in its subtly magical blend of the public and the personal, of the inner voice and the voices without, of the café and of the study, of the hearth and of the world, is a unique and wonderful achievement -- John Banville * New York Review of Books *
A haunting series of evocations and recollections... the very antithesis of your run-of-the-mill travel book -- Jan Morris * Observer *
