Invisible Cities

First published in 1972, this book is a sequence of descriptions in which Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan about cities he has seen, or imagined, across the empire. Each city is named for a woman and grouped under headings such as cities and memory, desire, signs, eyes, names, and the dead. The reports are brief and often paradoxical: a city of continuous departure, a city that is only its own map, a city built from the traces of the dead. Between the catalogues the two men talk about language, empire, and whether Polo is describing Venice over and over. The work is a fictional dialogue and a set of prose poems, not a travel chronicle.

Quarter bound in red-brown textured paper with cream paper sides printed with a colour image. Blind blocking on the spine. Gold rules on quarter binding. Red-brown slipcase covered in textured paper, front blocked in gold with a pattern.