"Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing
down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before.
This is highly unnerving: fortunately, you're usually too busy laughing to go
mad." — Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books
Reading, writing, translating; the avant-garde and tradition; the fate of the
novel: these are some of the themes of The Written World and the Unwritten World
. A collection of essays, forewords, articles, interviews, notes, and other
occasional pieces, this work displays Calvino's remarkable intelligence and
razor-sharp wit as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing
world. Drawn from