Invisible Cities

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'

• This title is exclusively available from Vintage Classics
• 'Of all the Italian post-war novelists, Italo Calvino is the adventurer. He glitters, impersonal, brilliant and lasting' Financial Times
• 'Whole chapters of unforced poetic prose in which insight and fantasy are perfectly matched-an exquisite world' Observer
• 'Invisible Cities' is perhaps his most beautiful work-the artist seems to have made peace with the tension between man's ideas of the many and the one' New York Review of Books