Microcosms

<p><b>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.</b><br><br>In the tiny borderlands of Istria and Italy from the forests of Monte Nevoso to the hidden valleys of the Tyrol to a Trieste caf&#233; <i>Microcosms</i> 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.</p>