Books by Italo Calvino
“The literature of working people, the people who the communists wanted to include in culture rather than separate from it, was steeped in the exuberant fairy tale, and Calvino wanted to see that culture recognised. When he looked around he couldn’t see a book that did that and so he decided to do it himself.” Read more...
Marina Warner, Novelist
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
by Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver
“Calvino teases again and again the pleasure of opening a new book. He casts you as the ‘traveller’ of the title, repeatedly showing up in virgin territory, new terrain, and there’s real excitement in that. This is a metaphor for the reader, who is always a tourist in the territory of their reading, never an immigrant. But then you often do want to know what happens. You want resolution. So the book puts an interesting strain on you. It frustrates the inherent expectation of prosecuting the plot that has been set up for you. The plot becomes a metaplot, grounded in interstitial drama of trying to piece together into a coherent whole what is by nature fragmentary and incomplete.” Read more...
The Best Metaphysical Thrillers
Greg Jackson, Novelist
“This is one of my favorite books ever. I’m tempted to give a lot of theory-based background to it – where it fits in the postmodern oeuvre and all that – but honestly it doesn’t even need to fit within a framework…This book is a travelogue of imagined cities that its protagonist, Marco Polo, has visited. If you read it straight through, it just seems like the author has come up with fifty-five really wacky and fantastical ideas for cities. Upon the second or third reading, you get the sense that it’s following a pattern, that the themes and the elements involved in these cities are following some kind of internal logic.” Read more...
Arianna Reiche, Novelist
“It’s a series of short stories, or a novel really. But he’s doing something that no other novelist has ever done. He looks at the history of the universe, the history of life on Earth – all the major milestones – and he makes it human.” Read more...
Marcus Chown, Science Writer
Interviews where books by Italo Calvino were recommended
The best books on Cosmology, recommended by Marcus Chown
From Kepler’s astronomy to Richard Feynman’s quantum electrodynamics, Marcus Chown launches us into the world of cosmology.
The best books on Earth History, recommended by Adam Maloof
Just as no one can study political science without a basic understanding of human history, or study a modern animal without a basic understanding of evolution, so no one can understand climate change without understanding the Earth’s history, argues the Princeton geology professor.
Magical Realism Books, recommended by Five Books interviewees
If you enjoy some fantastical elements in your literature—but you aren’t quite ready for full-on swords and sorcery—then perhaps magical realism books are for you. As a genre, magical realism is often associated with South America, thanks in large part to the ‘father of magical realism’ Gabriel García Márquez and mega-bestselling books by Isabel Allende, but examples can be found from all over the world. We’ve put a list of must-read titles.
The Best Ergodic Fiction, recommended by Arianna Reiche
The best fiction doesn’t have to be straightforward, and some novels contain clever devices to make the reader complicit in the story itself. Arianna Reiche, lecturer in metafiction at City, University of London, recommends five gamified novels that subvert our ideas of how fiction works.
The Best Travel Writing, recommended by Colin Thubron
The much-travelled author Colin Thubron reflects on more than 40 years of writing about other cultures, and shares his own favourite travel reading with us
The best books on The Death of Empires, recommended by James Meek
All empires are obsessed with the prospect of their own decline, says British journalist and novelist James Meek. He recommends books on the death of empires, from Austria-Hungary to Kublai Khan.
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1
The Invention of Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Ruth L. C. Simms -
2
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
by Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver -
3
Chess Story
by Stefan Zweig, translated by Joel Rotenberg -
4
The Intuitionist
by Colson Whitehead -
5
The Lost Daughter
by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
The Best Metaphysical Thrillers, recommended by Greg Jackson
The Best Metaphysical Thrillers, recommended by Greg Jackson
Metaphysical literature calls into question the very nature of reality, says the acclaimed US novelist Greg Jackson: it dramatises “the liquid mysteries of thought, pattern, and form.” Here, he highlights five ‘metaphysical thrillers’—artfully written novels powered by intrigue, which explore or embody philosophical dilemmas.
Marina Warner on Fairy Tales
‘It’s a long time since ogres have seemed so absolutely real,’ says Marina Warner, author and long-time scholar of fairy tales. Which makes now as good a time as any to immerse ourselves in the twisted truths of the fairy tale realm, with Warner’s selection of the best books of, or about, other-worldly tales of mischief and subversion, dreams and laughter, ‘hope against hope’
