Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
1: Diomira (Memory 1), Isidora (Memory 2), Dorothea (Desire 1), Zaira (Memory 3), Anastasia (Desire 2), Tamara (Signs 1), Zora (Memory 4), Despina (Desire 3), Zirma (Signs 2), Isaura (Thin 1) 2: Maurilia (Memory 5), Fedora (Desire 4), Zoe (Signs 3), Zenobia (Thin 2), Euphemia (Trading 1)
(Now I know the order of Zenobia, one of our first friends in New York.)
Italo Calvino is "the only great writer of my time" -- Gore Vidal
Invisible Cities seems suitable only for an adult who has seen many cities. I never read Borges as a teenager, though I read a little Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a bit of Paulo Coelho, and a lot of Umberto Eco. Never read Marco Polo either...
I could guess at or gloss over most of the extreme historical/obscure/literate references. Quite proud to have gotten cornucopia (an attribute of a statue of a god), capital (opposite of a plinth), vellum bindings, volumes of Averroes...but had to look up the Comte de Buffon ("volumes of Buffon ...
