Italo Calvino imagines travellers who meet at a castle, or later at a tavern, and find they have lost the power of speech. To tell their stories, they use tarot cards, laying them out in sequences that each person interprets. Calvino writes the tales that arise from these arrangements, drawing on Roland, Faust, Parsifal and Oedipus, and playing with the idea that stories can be generated by combining fixed symbols. It is a book on combinatorics and narrative, an experiment in how many tales one set of cards can make.
It is for readers of experimental fiction and fans of Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler. It rewards those who like structure and mythic images.
Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1994
- Publisher
- Mondadori
- ISBN
- 9788804390275
- Language
- IT
