Microcosms

Microcosms

Summary

Amid 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.

Reviews

  • A haunting amalgam of travelogue, autobiography and impressionist sketch book
    Jonathan Keates, Literary Review

About the author

Claudio Magris

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