| |
| Other People's Trades | vii |
| My House | 1 |
| Butterflies | 6 |
| News from the Sky | 10 |
| Beetles | 14 |
| A Bottle of Sunshine | 19 |
| The Moon and Us | 24 |
| Inventing an Animal | 27 |
| The Leap of the Flea | 33 |
| Frogs on the Moon | 38 |
| Love's Erector Set | 43 |
| The Invisible World | 47 |
| A Long Duel | 52 |
| Grandfather's Store | 59 |
| Why Does One Write? | 63 |
| The Skull and the Orchid | 67 |
| The Best Goods | 71 |
| The Scribe | 76 |
| 'The Most Joyful Creatures in the World' | 81 |
| The Mark of the Chemist | 86 |
| Eclipse of the Prophet | 91 |
| Stable/Unstable | 96 |
| The Language of Chemists (I) | 100 |
| The Language of Chemists (II) | 106 |
| The Book of Strange Data | 111 |
| Writing a Novel | 116 |
| François Rabelais | 121 |
| The Force of Amber | 126 |
| The Irritable Chess-Players | 131 |
| Renzo's Fist | 135 |
| The Fear of Spiders | 141 |
| Novels Dictated by Crickets | 146 |
| Domum Servavit | 152 |
| On Obscure Writing | 157 |
| The Children's International | 164 |
| Going Back to School | 170 |
| Ex-Chemist | 174 |
| Signs on Stone | 177 |
| Against Pain | 182 |
| Thirty Hours on Castoro Sei | 185 |
| The Hidden Player | 192 |
| Ritual and Laughter | 196 |
| The Need for Fear | 201 |
| To a Young Reader | 206 |