Invisible Cities

The book Invisible Cities involves two characters, the Tartar emperor Kublai Khan and the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo. The book is consists of descriptions of different cities that Marco Polo witnessed during his trip.

The book is consists of description of different cities. Each chapter describes a different city. Moreover, a different mentality and way of living.  Marco Polo divides the cities into several categories, cities and memory, cities and desires, cities and signs, thin cities, trading cities, cities and eyes, cities and names, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, continuous cities and hidden cities.

An example of the Cities and Memory will be Zaira, city of high bastions. When Marco Polo describes the city, he told Khan that he can go into very specific, concrete details of the cities. This is one of the features of cities and memory, that the traveller will remember every single details of the city. The city is specific, that reflects its current state, but there is no history of the city that can be told. However, the history can be spotted, embedded in the details of the city.

An example of the Cities and Signs will be Tamara. The difference of this city is that the symbols it has means a different things than what it appears. When the traveller visits Tamara, he will only remember Tamara the way the city defines herself, by all the symbols that the city contains.

Some say that The Invisibles Cities is seemingly a traveling journal of Marco Polo, but it actually is a documentary of different mentality that people possess towards life.