Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
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Invisible Cities

Author: Italo Calvino

Narrator: Richard Higgins

Unabridged: 2 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Mariner Books

Published: 10/26/2021


Synopsis

“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.” — from Invisible Cities

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.

“Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose . . . The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island.” — Jeanette Winterson

About Italo Calvino

ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees, and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on September 14, 2016

...A five star review... I hate flying. The claustrophobia of it. So usually when I return to Italy after visiting London I catch the train to Paris and then the night train to Venice. That’s my little extravagance. I catch the night train to Venice and not Florence for one moment. The moment of walk......more

Goodreads review by Paul on August 31, 2015

Marco Polo : Now I shall tell you of the beautiful city of Nottingham where the buildings are made mostly of blue glass, onyx and sausagemeat. The men of the city trade in fur, spices and photographs of each other with their respective spouses. All the men have large phalluses, sometimes so large th......more

Goodreads review by Riku on October 07, 2014

Invisible Cities; Imagined Lives Marco Polo was a dreamer. He had great ambitions - wanting to be a traveller, a writer and a favored courtier. He wanted to live in the lap of luxury in his lifetime and in the best illustrated pages of history later. But he could only be a dreamer and never much......more

Goodreads review by Leonard on February 21, 2021

After travelling to the Far East for more than twenty years, Marco Polo sailed back to his Venice hometown and, upon arriving, was taken prisoner by the invading army of Genoa. And so his journey ended at the bottom of a cell. As a precursor of captive writers such as Cervantes or Dostoyevsky, Marco......more