Italo Calvino

In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume. Translated by Patrick Creagh. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated by William …

t zero is a 1967 collection of short stories by Italian author Italo Calvino. The title story is based on a particularly uncertain moment in the life of a lion hunter. This second in time, t₀, is considered by the hunter against known previous seconds and hypothetical future seconds "Qfwfq" narrates the first set of …