Cosmicomics

Cosmicomics
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 172
Release: 1968
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156226004

Enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. “Naturally, we were all there, - old Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?” Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

The Complete Cosmicomics

The Complete Cosmicomics
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0544231937

The complete collection of “nimble and often hilarious” short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of a “cosmic know-it-all” with the unpronounceable name of Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Relating complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world, they are an indelible and delightful literary achievement. Originally published in Italian in three separate volumes—including the Asti d’Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics—these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. “Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I—or anyone, really—can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” —Colin Dwyer, NPR

The Distance of the Moon

The Distance of the Moon
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 55
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0241339111

'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.' Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomic short stories. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Mister Palomar

Mister Palomar
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 148
Release: 1985
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156627801

Italo Calvino's last fictional work is a witty, elegant, fantastic rendering of the ultimate observer, whose name, Mr. Palomar, deliberately evokes the famous telescope. "Beautiful, nimble, solitary feats of imagination" (The New York Times Book Review). Calvino is the acclaimed author of Difficult Loves and Invisible Cities.

Under the Jaguar Sun

Under the Jaguar Sun
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 100
Release: 1988
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156927949

One of Italy's greatest and most popular writers offers three witty, fantastical stories, each dominated by one of three senses--taste, hearing, or smell.

Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2013-08-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 054413320X

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.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 144
Release: 1979
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156154550

"A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their tales. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness."--Goodreads

Difficult Loves

Difficult Loves
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1984
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156260558

In a collection of stories written during the 1940s and 1950s, the author captures moments of revelation in the lives of ordinary people, instants blending recognition and alarm as deceptions and illusions are laid bare.

Fantastic Tales

Fantastic Tales
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2015-08-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0544152093

Twenty-six fantasy tales from the 19th century, tracing the genre from its roots in German romanticism to the ghost stories of Henry James. The editor, who prefaces each story, analyzes the resurgence of the fantastic in our day.

Into the War

Into the War
Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2014
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0544146387

"These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice."--from cover, page [4].