Invisible Cities

In Invisible Cities, Calvino mirrors reality in fantastical prose through imagined conversations between the explorer Marco Polo and Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. He conjures imaginary places gradually revealed to be the different quarters of ancient and modern Venice. This unique and wonderful oddity weaves together prose, poetry and philosophy, provoking questions about the complex nature of writing’s limitations alongside the impossible and beguiling spaces the novel’s characters inhabit.