Invisible Cities

Name: Invisible Cities
Rating: 4.0418410041841 (239 reviews)
Author: Italo Calvino
ISBN: 9798200883042

by Italo Calvino

4.0

(239 ratings)

164 pages25 editions1978Houghton Mifflin HarcourtISBN 9798200883042

Polo, Marco, -- 1254-1323? -- FictionKublai Khan, -- 1216-1294 -- Fiction

About this book

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

Publication Details

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1978
Pages: 164
ISBN: 9798200883042
Language: en
Editions: 25

About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (Santiago de Las Vegas de La Habana, 15 ottobre 1923 – Siena, 19 settembre 1985) è stato uno scrittore e paroliere italiano. Intellettuale di grande impegno politico, civile e culturale, è stato uno dei narratori italiani più importanti del secondo Novecento. I numerosi campi d'interesse toccati dal suo percorso letterario sono meditati e raccontati attraverso capolavori quali la trilogia de *I nostri antenati, Marcovaldo, Le cosmicomiche, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore,* uniti dal filo conduttore della riflessione sulla storia e la società contemporanea. ---------- Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the *Our Ancestors* trilogy (1952–1959), the *Cosmicomics* collection of short stories (1965), and the novels *Invisible Cities* (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). Lionised in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.