New Releases by Italo Calvino

"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

Calvino shows that the novel, far from being a dead form, is capable of endless mutations. If on a winter''s night a traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author. Based on a analogy between the reader''s desire to finish the story and the lover''s desire to consummate his or her passion, this book is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book are constantly and comically frustrated.

In Kublai Khan''s garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future.