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.

Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.

Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014.

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