Invisible Cities
  • Published: 1 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446414279
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

Invisible Cities

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'A subtle and beautiful meditation' Sunday Times

Fifty-five fictional cities, each described in beautiful detail - each with a woman's name...

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'

This is a captivating meditation on culture, language, time, memory and the nature of human experience.

'Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose... The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island' Jeanette Winterson

'Touches inexhaustibly on the essence of the human urge to create cities, be in cities, speak of cities' Guardian

'A subtle and beautiful meditation' Sunday Times
  • Published: 1 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446414279
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160
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About the author

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. One of the most respected writers of the twentieth century, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. A collection of Calvino's posthumous personal writings, The Hermit in Paris, was published in 2003.

Also by Italo Calvino

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
The Distance of the Moon
The Baron in the Trees
Cosmicomics
Last Comes the Raven
The Narrative of Trajan's Column
The Written World and the Unwritten World
See all

Praise for Invisible Cities

So important for thinking about the rich layers of life around us, our frailties, how we question and how we find meaning.

Red

Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose... The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island

Jeanette Winterson

Whole chapters of unforced poetic prose in which insight and fantasy are perfectly matched-an exquisite world

Observer

'Invisible Cities is perhaps his most beautiful work-the artist seems to have made peace with the tension between man's ideas of the many and the one

New York Review of Books

The most beautiful of his books throws up ideas, allusions, and breathtaking imaginative insights on almost every page. Each time he returns from his travels, Marco Polo is invited by Kublai Khan to describe the cities he has visited-Although he makes Marco Polo summon up many cities for the Khan's imagination to feed on, Calvino is describing only one city in this book. Venice, that decaying heap of incomparable splendour, still stands as substantial evidence of man's ability to create something perfect out of chaos

Paul Bailey, Times Literary Supplement

Of all the Italian post-war novelists, Italo Calvino is the adventurer. He glitters, impersonal, brilliant and lasting

Financial Times