Claudio Magris may well be one of Italy’s, indeed one of Europe’s most esteemed authors, but that certainly doesn’t make him easy to read. At its heart this fragmentary and disjointed novel tells of a man obsessed by gathering a collection of weapons, documents, film and other paraphernalia of war into a museum in Trieste. This tale is based on a real collector, some of whose collection is still available to view in the city. But the novel goes far beyond this basic narrative in a bewildering exploration of war, history and memory, interweaving multiple themes, ideas, characters and voices. All of which combine into a stream-of-consciousness outpouring that I found challenging, difficult to follow and ultimately unrewarding.