Microcosms

<p><strong>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.</strong><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 cafe, <em>Microcosms</em> 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>