Collection of Sand
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This “brilliant collection of essays” and travelogues by the celebrated author of Invisible Cities “may change the way you see the world around you” (The Guardian, UK).
Italo Calvino’s boundless curiosity and ingenious imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, his last collection of new works published during his lifetime. Delving into the delights of the visual world—both in art and travel—the subjects of these 38 essays range from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. In Calvino’s words, this collection is “a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods…The fascination of a collection lies just as much in what it reveals as in what it conceals of the secret urge that led to its creation” (from Collection of Sand).
Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, “beautifully translated by Martin McLaughlin” (The Guardian, UK).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Calvino's diverse interests are on full display in this collection of delightful and erudite essays by the author of Invisible Cities. Originally published in Italian in 1984, it was the last volume of new work published in his lifetime. Many of the eclectic pieces are collected from a newspaper column Calvino (1923 1985) wrote for La Repubblica, and from a series of travel essays set in Iran, Japan, and Mexico. Museum exhibitions draw Calvino's attention to the natural world, to the bizarre and to the past. His subtle humor threads its way through staid descriptions of wax museums, automata, knots, and the ruins of a pig sty. The collection includes a moving remembrance of Roland Barthes and several idiosyncratic but valuable book reviews. Calvino's travelogues, particularly those set in Japan, are the best example of his ability to capture the real world with the same vigor and verve as his imaginative fiction. In Mexico, Calvino visits a 2,000-year-old tree and walks away with the impression that, like history itself, the tree grows "according to no plan" but finds continuity through redundancy. "In the beginning was language," he writes, and it's clear that no matter where he turns his attention, his universe begins and ends in reverence for the written word. The book offers a delectable array of cognitive insights, ancient history, and Calvino's indispensable voice.
