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This collection of short stories by Gianni Cerati, the most acclaimed Italian avant-garde novelist after Calvino, uses the eyes of an archaeologist to rediscover the everyday strangeness in modern life on the Po Plain. The thick fog of the Po River plain fills the shots of Antonioni and Wenders, where the author roams and listens, using 30 short stories to form a complete picture. People who develop perpetual motion machines all day long, children who run away to get rid of boredom, women who listen to the passing of time on their commute... In a boring world, watch the lines of time and glimpse the shadows cast by the light that constructs reality. The 30 short stories bring the simplicity and freshness of "The Decameron", through the faint atmosphere of "Dublins", and leap into the miracle of modern daily life. Cerati's stories, like Morandi's still lifes, lack grand landscapes and focus on discovering the strangeness of everyday life. To borrow the words of John Berger, it is filled with "the loneliness of sunlight reflecting between buildings."