OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923. He grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985
This is an infuriating and exquisite fantasy which takes outrageous liberties with maps. Marco Polo is brought before the Kublai Khan and obliged to describe 55 of the cities he has encountered on his journeys. There is the earth-hating town of Baucis where everything is raised on stilts, the spiderweb city of Octavia, the woven metropolis of Eudoxia where citizens are lost among the cloth and threads... Of course, you'll not find any of these mesmerizing places in an atlas unless it is an atlas of daydreams. These are cities far too playful and beguiling to be real. (Kirkus UK)
