The Collector Collector

The Collector Collector takes a conventional boy-meets-girl story and turns it into a brilliant comic romp. The hero of Tibor Fischer’s tale is an antique bowl that comes into the possession of a lovelorn, young London art appraiser named Rosa. Rosa’s bowl is no ordinary piece of clay, however: it is a ceramic sage, an urn of uncommon erudition that has witnessed all of history’s major convulsions–revolutions, famines, massacres, wars–and has survived more than four hundred breakages and three thousand thefts. By investing his bowl with soul, Fischer gives us a hilarious, mantel-eye view of depravity and redemption, sex and lust, burglary and archaeology. “A writer gifted with a formidable imagination” (The Washington Post Book World), Fischer takes us on a thrilling ride from the primitive societies of prehistory to the equally primitive society of present-day London.