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Italo Calvino
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Invisible Cities Paperback – May 3, 1978

by Italo Calvino (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,373 ratings
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Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory.


“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    176 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Mariner Books Classics
  4. Publication date
    May 3, 1978
  5. Dimensions
    8.01 x 5.43 x 0.47 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0156453800
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0156453806
  8. Lexile measure
    1290L
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

Review

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, The New York Review of Books

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books Classics (May 3, 1978)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0156453800
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0156453806
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1290L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.01 x 5.43 x 0.47 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,373 ratings

About the author

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Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino

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Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 - 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).

Admired in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
2,373 global ratings
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Damaged
The book itself is a great book. But the delivery was awful. I opened it and my book had been bent in many places and is dirty. It looks like it’s been used for years when it’s supposed to be new. Very disappointed.
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Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Weird, Philosophical Italian classic novel
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2024
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This novel is set up as a conversation between explorer Marco Polo and mongol ruler Kublai Khan. The report on cities morphs into meditations on life, rulership, travel and many other topics. I enjoyed and will probably reread
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Seth Moody
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2024
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It's distilled and beautiful and fascinating. If you're looking for inspiration, here you go.

If you start it and find yourself disappointed, persist. The dialogs wane and the cities wax.
One person found this helpful
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Joel D. Hirst
4.0 out of 5 stars The Inferno of the Living
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2018
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There’s a cyclicalness to the world that makes us uncomfortable. We in the west prefer to think that things are neatly stacked, one idea upon another in a glorious edifice of success; eschewing the crumbling waste which is not to last as it disintegrates away leaving the foundations solid and enduring, mortared as they are by the good qualities of upright men.

Civilization, we call it – the abiding construction ever upwards in a richness unto glory.

But things are not lasting, not eternal nor stable. They rise and fall and rise again – like the cities of Italo Calvino’s novel “Invisible Cities”.

Worse still, things are not even consistent. Like Calvino’s cities – Kublai Khan’s surprise that his guest is just describing Venice over and over and over; future and past, wealth and ruin, death and rebirth, destruction and renewal; the traveler afraid to say the name of his own home: “Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased (…). Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” We are all afraid of losing our home; afraid to say the names of the things which we love lest they fade away, ephemeral in the light we shine upon them. And we too are afraid to speak about what it is that we love, lest our enemies notice that which is in our hearts and target their evil toward its destruction.

As if they already don’t; already aren’t.

The irony is not lost on me that I came to learn of Calvino’s masterpiece in an article about Aleppo – that oldest of Mesopotamian cities. That place where Abraham milked his sheep to feed the poor. Important in the Babylonian Empire, the Assyrian as well – the Amorites and the Hittites and the Persians. The capital of Sham; the center of civilizations rising and falling and recurring. The end of Kublai Khan’s silk road; visited by Marco Polo to be sure, and described to the Khan in all its ancient glory.

“Aleppo has fallen” – how many times has that gravid phrase been repeated since the misty days of prehistory? From the days when writing was done upon clay taken from the Queiq River using a stylus carved perhaps from wood taken from the ancient forests of Lebanon. Will it rise again, after its recent destruction? Time will tell.

Yes, history rises and falls – and it is for those of us who fear to utter the names of our own cities, lest they too fall away and are spoken of no more – to understand why, and to announce to the world that which is good and true and abiding. For, “…the inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

I, for one, do not accept the inferno – nor will I become a part of it.
21 people found this helpful
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Henry Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars magical prose
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2014
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You past adolescence and enter the world of adult literature. At first, you read anything and everything that found its way to your hands; then, slowly you begin discovering your own, unique literary taste, and you become selective. The more you read, the more selective you become. Your list of favorite authors and genres grows; you find literary voices that speak directly to your soul. By now, you have reached mid age, and you have over two decades of serious reading under your belt. Any new book that you open, any new author that you discover is judged against your favorites, against the voices that stimulated your mind over the years. Words and phrases are judged against those that provided comfort when you felt down; ideas and executions are compared against the benchmarks established over the years. You think you know what you like; you think you know what to expect. Well, perhaps you do. New books come along, and some attempt to quietly sneak in to your consciousness, while others attempt to shatter your world. Most, if not all, pale with your favorites, do not fit with your ideas, or leave you cold.
Then, one day, you come across a gently used book. It's small, it looks interesting, and you buy it. That book manages to get under your skin in a very inconspicuous way, without you even noticing. Such was my encounter with Invisible Cities.
My first Italo Calvino. He arrived on the heels of Bolaño, Borges, Ungar, and Girondo. Good company, you might say. I say no. Bolaño left me lukewarm—I was expecting more. Borges blew my mind—but only temporarily—he is amazing, but very systematic. Ungar was great—while reading him. Girondo was thought-provoking—entertaining but not mind-altering.
Calvino managed to deliver where all of the above failed. He did not force his way to me, he came unsuspected, veiled in beautiful prose. All of the aforementioned authors wrote fine literature, amazing actually. Yet, they were all "in your face" at times. Calvino is like a spy who sneaks in under the cover of darkness. And here comes the strangest part: I haven't even noticed.
To be honest, I cannot quite describe what kind of book is Invisible Cities. At first, I thought I knew. Then I thought I did not know, then I thought I knew again, and, in the end, I was reminded that I did not know.
The book is simply beautiful. It is irrelevant and relevant at the same time, pointless and necessary at other times, while remaining non-contradictory. Does this make sense? I thought so.

To me, Invisible Cities is not a single book, but three separate books.
The first one is a wonderful study of humanity. These are the cities that reflect human behavior, the cities that serve as metaphor for greed, anger, vanity, et cetera.
The second book is a book of cautionary tales. These are the cities that tell a story, a story of what will happen if we, as humans, do not change our ways.
The third book is a book of philosophy. These are the cities as metaphors for mortality, actions and consequences, continuity, faith... To this book also belong the conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, for these are truly philosophical.

Then again, I am probably wrong on all counts. One thing is certain, and that is the undeniable truth that Italo Calvino was an amazing writer. His prose is magical.

So now, after more than two decades of reading what I consider to be quality literature, I have to shuffle my mental shelf and make room for Calvino, right next to my all-time favorites where he belongs.
47 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Tim Bientjes
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2022
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Great read, interesting, fun, and fantastical.
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Vijayaraghavan
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
Reviewed in India on November 23, 2023
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Wonderful book
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Nasko Kondakov
5.0 out of 5 stars Must-read for Architecture students and enthusiasts
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2020
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First of all, tremendous work on the delivery. The book arrived in perfect condition, with that expected new off=the-press smell to it.

And to talk about the contents -- I was recommended that book from my Architecture course, and boy, was it exciting to read. The mysterious out-of-a-fairy-tale cities truly capture the architecture enthusiasts imagination. And even people who do not care much about the buildings around them, this book will transport you in a world of fantastic Spider-Web cities, Cities made out of signs, and so many more.

Another fantastic thing about this book is the additional activity it can present for the eager reader: how about you try to depict those cities in the form of a painting, model, collage, illustration, anything really? Really joyful ride, and a quite easy read, without having to stress too much on the story, nor on keeping track of all the cities. Almost like a safari through the world of Marco Polo's cityscapes.
One person found this helpful
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Cliente de Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente Producto!
Reviewed in Mexico on March 2, 2019
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Excelente producto que ajusta perfecto a mi teléfono. Funciona perfecto la sensibilidad tactil.
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cristina s.
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfecto
Reviewed in Spain on June 30, 2019
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Ha llegado a tiempo, perfecto
El libro lo recomiendo a todo el mundo, especialmente si les gusta viajar
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