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 give 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.