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rabklewis's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
eb2114's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.25
dyno8426's review against another edition
5.0
Invisible Cities is a kaleidoscope of human experience. This book is like an atlas of human imagination and goes from places as awe-inspiring as Kubla Khan's Xanadu, to places as horrifying as Dante's Inferno. It is both an evidence and a blueprint of human lives which becomes concrete through the places that we built and gets shape by the things we place to fill them. Like Marco Polo finding his beloved Venice in all the corners of the world that he travels, Calvino takes fragments of our lives' memories and creates a collage of unbelievable cities out of them by supplementing them with his imagination. So, while the title becomes almost too literal to bring any surprises, the tangible relation and familiarity with our own experiences materialises. When we imagine traveling to other cities, we imagine the lives of the people living there; in the same way, we visit Calvino's cities by looking at the dreams and fears of the people who inhabit them.
What this collection and more particularly, the dialogues between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan end up evoking is also an interplay and interdependence between memories and dreams. We arrive at a nice contradiction when we think that dreams emerge out of imagination of experiences never had before, whereas how can we think of things which we have never experienced ever. If we ever try to dream, we are always stretching or compressing, collating or fragmenting, bits of our lives in ways which our memories and imagination can allow us. Memories become the matter of dreams and imagination is just the glue and scissors of how capably we can do it. Marco Polo's travels are happening in the physical realm or mental, it'll forever remain ambiguous. But Calvino's more interested in making the readers realise that our travels through space and time are metamorphosing our memories and evolving our dreams. And this makes neither the past concrete, nor the future certain - like the cities that we inhabit that we see constantly evolving or deteriorating, as we may take them to be.
What this collection and more particularly, the dialogues between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan end up evoking is also an interplay and interdependence between memories and dreams. We arrive at a nice contradiction when we think that dreams emerge out of imagination of experiences never had before, whereas how can we think of things which we have never experienced ever. If we ever try to dream, we are always stretching or compressing, collating or fragmenting, bits of our lives in ways which our memories and imagination can allow us. Memories become the matter of dreams and imagination is just the glue and scissors of how capably we can do it. Marco Polo's travels are happening in the physical realm or mental, it'll forever remain ambiguous. But Calvino's more interested in making the readers realise that our travels through space and time are metamorphosing our memories and evolving our dreams. And this makes neither the past concrete, nor the future certain - like the cities that we inhabit that we see constantly evolving or deteriorating, as we may take them to be.
mynameisfraser's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
kcjulia's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Beautiful prose about cities of one’s imagination, woven into a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. -0.5 for the city names.
siddarthkrishna10's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
doormatt's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jayseewhy's review against another edition
5.0
Italo Calvino depicts here a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan where Polo regales Kublai with stories of the cities within his falling empire. Descriptions for the cities range from deeply thought-provoking, to witty and humours, to surreal and fantastic.
I was expecting to find the book to be an esoteric bore but found it to be as engaging and perhaps as entertaining as Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s night a traveller.”
I was expecting to find the book to be an esoteric bore but found it to be as engaging and perhaps as entertaining as Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s night a traveller.”
daneelolivaw67's review against another edition
2.0
Strano, parecchio, non ho capito il significato di questo "romanzo".
call_it_kizmet's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
5.0