イタロ・カルヴィーノ

現代イタリア文学を代表し世界的に注目され続けている著者の名作。マルコ・ポーロがフビライ汗の寵臣となって、様々な空想都市（巨大都市、無形都市など）の奇妙で不思議な報告を描く幻想小説の極致。

変幻自在な語り部Qfwfg氏が、あるときは地球の起源の目撃者、あるときは生物の進化過程の生殖細胞となって、宇宙史と生命史の奇想天外な物語を繰り広げる。幻想と科学的認識が高密度で結晶した傑作。

If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian postmodernist writer Italo Calvino. The narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second …

Cosmicomics is a book of short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. Each story takes a scientific "fact", and builds an imaginative story around it. An always extant being called Qfwfq narrates all of the stories save two, each of which is a memory of an event in the …

Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman’s breasts, or a gorilla’s behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual …

Set on the Ligurian coast during World War II, The Path to the Spiders' Nests tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice who lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spend as much time as he can at the local bar. When his friends dare him to steal a pistol from a Nazi soldier, he sets off on a series of picaresque …

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