The Collector Collector
The hero of Fischer's tale is a bowl that comes into the possession of a young, lovelorn 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. Equipped with an unerring memory and the ability to impart wisdom to its hapless custodian, the bowl observes and narrates the invasion and gradual colonization of Rosa's tiny apartment by an uninvited houseguest: the sex-addicted kleptomaniac Nikki. Inhabiting the fringes of Fischer's kinky, dystopic universe are Tabitha, a newspaper sob-sister whom Rosa kidnaps and confines in a backyard well, demanding romantic advice in lieu of ransom, and the indestructible Lump, a fierce but affectionate Amazon whose sole mission is to rescue Nikki from her many libidinous admirers.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
3people
2013–2023years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- One of my MFA mentors, Tibor Fischer complained about that. His debut novel, Under the Frog was shortlisted for the Booker prize and his publishers wanted more of that, but he wanted to write different things (and did). His later books tend towards darkly comic crime fiction. I recommend The Collector Collector as a good starting point.
- I enjoyed The Collector Collector and The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer. They're both short, and funny.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collector-Tibor-Fischer/dp/00992681...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Gang-Tibor-Fischer/dp/00995...
I enjoyed all the books written by Fred Vargas. Detective stories, but funny. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fred-Vargas/e/B001I9OXT6
- I like books by Tibor Fischer. I re-read "The collector collector" which I particularly enjoy for the sense of entitlement the petty criminals have.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0099268191/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qi...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0099268191/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=...
There's probably a passive income project in scraping HN once a month for book recommendations and putting them on a page with referal links to the various formats of the books on various sites. Not sure how passive that is.
- > I'd personally love it if society had more people like swombat, rather than fewer.
You might feel differently if you lived next to a rule breaker who had no concept of noise nuisance.
"The Collector Collector" (Tibor Fischer) is a fun read; relevant here because he describes quite nicely the sense of entitlement that some criminals feel.
- That reminds me of a scene from Tibor Fischer's The Collector Collector; a character's van is stolen, cleaned, and returned to its parking spot.
