Invisible cities
Italo Calvino, Anthony Doerr, Karina Maria Puente Frantzen
Readers rate it 4.1 (318 on Hardcover)
165 pages · Released 1972 · Harvest
Content report card
Invisible cities parent’s guide: what’s inside
Violence
Language
Sexual content
LGBTQ+ themes
Scary or mature
Substance use
What it offers
A note for parents
Invisible Cities is a philosophical, experimental novel composed of imaginative descriptions of impossible cities presented as Marco Polo's accounts to Kublai Khan. There is no violence, profanity, or inappropriate content; the work is purely intellectual and poetic. However, its fragmented structure, abstract style, and thematic complexity about the nature of reality and communication make it better suited to older teens and adults rather than younger children, who may find it challenging and slow-moving.
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From the publisher
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's... "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Ficción
- Explorers
- Kings and rulers
- Exploradores
- Tarot
- Reyes y soberanos
- Exploration
- Urbanism
- Literature
- Travel literature
- Fiction literature
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ISBN 9780156453806 · Harvest