The Book of Imaginary Journeys

Inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, The Book of Imaginary Journeys by Xabier P. DoCampo follows in the tradition of great travel literature that began with Homer's Odyssey. It purports to be the transcription of two travel journals written by a certain X. B. R., in which the Traveller gives as objective a description as he can of the cities and kingdoms he visits. So it is he comes to a city you can only visit for three days or where you cannot fall asleep, a city balanced on the fine point of a diamond or rotating on a water wheel, a city whose inhabitants are all tree-dwelling women or descended from birds, a city where the tombstones are inscribed not with the names of the deceased but with the titles of their favourite books, a city where money is only valid for a year, where none of its inhabitants can go fishing because all the rods have been turned into soldiers' lances, whose ministers are made to wear nooses as a warning to stay clean... The Traveller records songs, proverbs and remedies he hears along the way and describes some of the people he meets - a woman who conducts imaginary orchestras, a man who loves the earth so much he would like to plough it with a pair of unicorns, another searching for a treasure guarded by seven keys... Like translation, travel is a return to the source, the point of departure. What the Traveller takes away from the experience is what he has learned. Xabier P. DoCampo has written numerous books for adults and children. He was awarded the Spanish National Book Award in 1995 for his story collection When There's a Knock on the Door at Night. The Book of Imaginary Journeys received awards from the Galician-Language Writers Association, the blog Fervenzas Literarias, and the Díaz Pardo Prize for Illustration. The thirty-five illustrations it contains are by one of Galicia's best-known visual artists, Xosé Cobas.