Top reviews

• 

  IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER

  “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller. Relax. Concentrate”.

  This is the first sentence in this book. A book that complies no less than ten other books within itself. A fictional story about compulsive reading and writing, about books and why we read.

  Review by Laura Friera on 14:04, 04 Apr 2008

  Do you agree? (Agreements: 0, Disagreements: 0)

• 

  Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

  Close your eyes and imagine you are in the city.

  Think of the size and style of the architecture; the look of its inhabitants; the business of the city; the cost of the newspapers; the shape of the roads; the smell of the pollution; the colour of the sky; even the taste of the greasy spoon all day breakfast…

  Now imagine a universal city where all these thoughs play out simultaneously – with a million further ideas – however with their own quirks and haecceity: one city and all cities at once; a city of reality and of pure imagination combined. And one where you are capable of walking around, viewing the architecture, interacting with its people, feeling the stone, the wood and the concrete of its fabric, perceiving the odours and pleasant aromas, and exhalting in the tangible warmth of the city’s summer reflecting in windows…

  Invisible Cities concerns the language of the imagination; cemented and bricked up in the walls of each of the multiple cities of its contents. These cities are both independent and wholly reliant on the next city’s description; each being both smoke and mirror reflection to the next work. Each piece a gem, polished by the author to reveal its many gorgeous facets.

  Named after what seemingly are exotic female given names, the trail from one city to another pans out through a lucid, extraordinarily embellished and fantastical world of prose given by the narrator, Marco Polo, as an account of his travels, to the would be instigator, and sole ear of his travels, Kubla Khan.

  Beautifully wandering in its style, Calvino yet again excels himself as a writer and observer of infinite style and grace. Here for example, manifest in its many and varied psychological, physical and sensory states, each short description combines as a masterful fragment to, piece by piece, build the walls of your own construct of the imagination.

  These are fantastical urban texts to read on the tube, bus, whilst in a queue. In fact anywhere, and anytime you are in the city!

  Review by Helen Frosi on 14:04, 04 Apr 2008

  Do you agree? (Agreements: 0, Disagreements: 1)

What's your view? Write a review for Invisible Cities