my box of pearls

A book (I believe) is something that has a beginning and an end (even if it isn't a novel in the strict sense), it is a space where the reader must come in, walk around, even get lost, but in a certain moment find an exit, or several exits…

At times all I need is a brief glimpse... a glint of light in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them. (Italo Calvino about Invisible Cities)

Invisible Cities , by Italo Calvino ( I've mentioned it before but I I like to revisit my favourite books) was published in 1971 and consists of fifty-five chapters in which Marco Polo describes cities he supposedly visited to Kublai Khan, the emperor of China. The emperor is tired of the stories brought to him by his messengers across the empire, only the Venetian traveller's stories keep him interested. He insists Marco Polo talks about Venice, but he won't talk about his home city, only about strange cities nobody else has ever seen.

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.

It's a book to read slowly, again and again. Those not familiar with Calvino's surrealist writings will probably lose their way but as he said, they will find an exit and then come back. It's dreamy, full of symbols, a tour de force between the skeptical Khan and the visionary Marco Polo, weary old age and youth. You will stop to savour the ideas and the poetry, and don't be surprised if you suddenly feel the urge to travel, to explore strange exotic cities with names that must be read aloud and then just whispered .

As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which " has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take ( Gore Vidal).

In the town of Ciutadella, on the Spanish Balearic island of Menorca, they have built a hotel inspired by Italo Calvino's book. It's small and exquisite, a boutique hotel in which the interior design is entirely based on the Invisible Cities and each room is representative of a different city. It is for sale also as a private home or a club. If I win Euromillions I may buy it, I would love to own a hotel on the Med. And you are invited, of course.