num_pages: 165
description: Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated by William Weaver."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 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.
language: English
title: Invisible Cities
titlecomplete: Invisible Cities
characters: Kublai Khan, Marco Polo
genres: Architecture, Short Stories, Novels, Literature, Italian Literature, Fantasy, Classics, Italy, Fiction, Magical Realism
ratings_count: 79932
places: Mongol Empire
awards: awardedAt: 189331200000
name: Nebula Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 157795200000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Translation
publisher: Harcourt Brace, 1974