19 May, 2001: Pfitz
Oh boy, was this book a charmer. I'm a huge fan of Italo Calvino's If on a winter night a traveller. Huge. And this story, by Andrew Crumey, felt like one long story form Calvino's book, with extra bonus Borgesian elements. Whee! So meta! It's great! The setup is that a very eccentric prince (there's no specifics on time or space; call it 18th C. Europe, when the Wunderkammer was still going strong) has devoted his life -- and his subjects' energies -- to the production of imaginary cities. Architects will construct blueprints for all the imaginary buildings, biographers will detail all the imaginary residents' lives, cartographers will map every imaginary inch, and so on. The full realization of the latest city, Rreinnstadt, will be the prince's, and the kingdom's, great and lasting achievement.