Italo Calvino's unbounded curiosity and masterful imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here, Calvino applies his encyclopedic mind to the delights of the visual world, in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it is.