Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every city. Marina and Anna Della read Invisible Cities alongside the Travels of Marco Polo, and explore how both blur the lines between reality and fantasy, storyteller and audience. They discuss the connections between Calvino’s love of fairytales and his anti-fascist politics, and why he saw the fantastic as a mode of truth-telling.
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Further reading in the LRB:
Salman Rushdie: Calvino
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n17/salman-rushdie/calvino
James Butler: Infinite Artichoke
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n12/james-butler/infinite-artichoke
Jonathan Coe: Calvinoism
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n06/jonathan-coe/calvinoism
Next episode:Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
