Looking into each globe, you see a blue city, the model of a different Fedora…” “In the center of Fedora, that gray stone metropolis, stands a metal building with a crystal globe in every room. Each fictitious city lingered long after a reading, and I find myself returning time and again to places both ethereal and vivid, to gaze up at the city of Dorothea, with its aluminum towers flanked by spring-operated drawbridges and populated by women with fine teeth (Cities and Desire 1), or to stroll the streets of Esmeralda, where cats, smugglers, illicit lovers, conspirators and mosquito-chasing swallows cut arcs across roads, sewers, and sky (Trading Cities 5). I had the fortune to have the audiobook to go with the reading, and John Lee’s narration helped accentuate the expansive and lyrical text.

Working through the chewy center of each sentence, I come across a twist in language, a shift in cadence, images combined in configurations previously unthought of. Reading Invisible Cities is akin to visiting a candy store: The selection is marvellous, the colours are vivid, flavours burst, sensations abound. Translated from Italian into English by William Weaver, each account of Calvino’s imagined cities resembles a prose poem. “This is what I want to hear from you: confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies!” Eventually, the merchant reveals that each of his fantastical descriptions may really be reflections of his home place of Venice… Cities and Words Captivated but skeptical of the traveller’s tales, the emperor probes and jousts with Polo during each of their exchanges. Polo tells Kublai about cities of delight and desire, cities tinged with regrets, vibrant cities, failing cities, seemingly impossible cities that defy logic and time. Seeking to learn about his kingdom from his seat of power, Kublai Khan orders Polo to regale him with accounts of cities that lie within his vast realm. The story loosely revolves around meetings between an aging Kublai Khan, Tartar emperor, and a young Marco Polo, Venetian merchant. At times delightfully whimsical and intensely melancholic, Invisible Cities is a testament to the power of an author at the height of his powers to provoke, enthrall, and connect. It is a work that brushes aside conventions of form and narrative to ruminate on ideas of memory and place, touching on everything from trajectory of civilizations to the limits of communication. Even the broadest definitions of historical fiction and magical realism don’t quite fit, as Calvino blends real and imagined details into a concoction of seemingly irreverent tales. Invisible Cities is a travelogue to places that do not exist. Nor is it conventional fantasy, doing away with the worlds it creates almost as soon as it forms them. It isn’t traditional fiction on a structural level, having no story arc or a defined ending.

I’m not sure how to describe Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

Invisible cities by italo calvino