Modern Classics: Collection of Sand

'These pieces start from 'things observed' and open out to offer glimpses of other dimensions of the mind'

Italo Calvino claimed that 'the brain begins in the eye'. The essays collected here display his fascination with the visual universe, in which the things we see tell a truth about the world. Calvino writes about such diverse subjects as the imaginative pleasures of maps, bizarre exhibitions and the earliest forms of written language. Books and paintings provoke discussions of artistic motivation, while descriptions of a meticulous Japanese garden, Trajan's column crumbling to dust or a Mexican temple smothered by the jungle lead to contemplations on space, time and civilization.

Surprising and profound, Collection of Sand, newly translated into English for the first time, provides a glimpse into the mind of a master of the imagination.