About this title: This novel takes the form of a series of conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, in which the traveler recounts for the emperor fabulous tales of cities he has known--cities that are imaginary, exotic, and haunting in their strangeness. As the two men talk, the boundaries between reality and illusion become less clear, until they ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: New. Orders placed after Dec. 7 cannot be guaranteed delivery before Christmas. GREAT BUY. Brand New From US Distributor. WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER with OVER 3, 500, 000 BOOKS SOLD. read more
Edition: Fifth Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Harvest Books, San Diego CA
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780156453806ISBN:0156453800
Description: Very Good with no dust jacket. 0156453800. Softbound, light wear/soil, crease starting at spine, pgs clean/white; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 165 pages. read more
Description: Good. Ships from the UK. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780099429838ISBN:0099429837
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 176 pages. (176 pages) marco polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the chinese ruler kublai khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: venice. (Paperback) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harcourt brace Javanovich
Date Published: 1979
Description: Very Good. 3 book boxed set, the 3 books are in very good condition with uncreased spine, clear and bright pages slight shelf wear and sunned spines, the slip cover box is solid but shows rubbing and shelf wear. read more
Description: As New. Tight, good as new book. Appears never to have been read. Clean, lustrous cover, perfect spine and solid binding--you'll shimmy ecstatically when this book gets to you! ! ! ALSO: book is encased and ships in protective mylar bag! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780151452903ISBN:0151452903
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. A former library book with the usual identifiers in a protective glossy dust jacket covering. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Dust Jacket Included. First Edition. A lovely copy in silver cloth over black paper covered boards, silver titles to the spine in a fresh, bright pictorial dustwrapper showing the slightest of use at the edges, the heel of the spine and some very minor creasing as is com mon with this title. 8vo. 165 pp. Truly Calvino's masterpiece. A very nice copy. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 08/06/1979
ISBN-13:9780330257312ISBN:0330257315
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 08/06/1979
ISBN-13:9780330257312ISBN:0330257315
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 08/06/1979
ISBN-13:9780330257312ISBN:0330257315
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Description: Good in n/a jacket. Softcover. Sound & good copy, light to moderate rubbing/edgewear to wraps, bend at bottom right hand corner. read more
"Given the subject matter-um, descriptions of cities-I wasn't expecting this book to affect me on such a personal, visceral level. But during the final city description and again in Marco Polo's closing dialogue with Kublai Khan, I got serious chills. And to put that in perspective, I was finishing it outside (90+ degrees) George Bush Intercontinental Houston, or whatever the hell that airport's called. Now this effect may have been compounded by the fact that I was also listening to the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. Despite the inarguable greatness of Basil Poledouris' score, however, I have no doubt that it was this book that ultimately moved me to an epidermal state that has no business budding on a summer day in Texas. It's that good-a philosophical gem and a gratifying guide for the adventurous mind and wonder-full spirit.
It took two or three city descriptions for me to realize that Marco Polo wasn't describing cities so much as the human mind and experience. Rather than take away from the beautiful physicality of the descriptions, however, this gives the book a limitless pleasure and depth. How to describe it? It's like a children's book for adults. There's this magical other-world, other-time feel that's complex and meaningful and gorgeous. Think about a fairy tale with its shiny storyline, ex facie, that's also serving up something edifying and subtextual. Invisible Cities is the grown-up version. And the descriptions are often just curious and strange enough that you can come away with multiple meanings, in part determined by your current mental/emotional state. Sometimes I was too puzzled or infatuated with the physical description to divine much of anything coherent, but this serves to make the inevitable reread that much more appealing. As Calvino via Polo tells us, it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear. Amen."
"Sinceramente, nem sei por onde começar a opinião deste livro. Aproveitei as mini-férias do Carnaval para o ler e dei a tarefa por concluída em algumas horas, tal foi a forma como fiquei hipnotizada com esta leitura.
Não é um livro muito fácil de descrever - a sinopse é, contudo, bastante elucidativa - ou de catalogar. Trata-se da colocação em palavras de uma imaginação prodigiosa. O livro não tem propriamente uma história, para além do facto de termos Marco Polo a falar de diversas cidades ao imperador Kublai Kan. As várias cidades vão desfilando diante dos nossos olhos, agrupadas por temas (Memória, Desejo, Sinais, Subtis, Trocas, Olhos, Nome, Mortos, Céu, Contínuas e Ocultas), sendo que cada tema contém 5 cidades ordenadas segundo um esquema cuidado, mas que nem por isso impede o leitor de se sentir completamente enredado no que está a ler.
A grande maioria das cidades descritas são completamente surreais: desde cidades debaixo de terra ou de água, a cidades suspensas ou que consistem em duas metades, em que uma delas periodiocamente vai viajar por outras paragens. Mas, para além do surrealismo físico, estas cidades são também descritas através dos sentimentos dos seus habitantes, dos quais conhecemos os pensamentos e estados de espírito, que, frequentemente, se reflectem na própria cidade descrita.
A escrita é simplesmente genial: faz-nos viajar, imaginar, pensar. Pensar que todas as cidades descritas podem ser lados de apenas uma cidade, pensar no verdadeiro significado de tantas descrições e reflexões. Para mim, uma das conclusões a tirar deste livro é que a imaginação tem muita força. Termino este post tal como o livro termina, com esta frase genial:
O inferno dos vivos não é uma coisa que virá a existir; se houver um, é o que já está aqui, o inferno que habitamos todos os dias, que nós formamos ao estarmos juntos. Há dois modos para não o sofrermos. O primeiro torna-se fácil para muita gente: aceitar o inferno e fazer parte dele a ponto de já não o vermos. O segundo é arriscado e exige uma atenção e uma aprendizagem contínuas: tentar e saber reconhecer, no meio do inferno, quem e o que não é inferno, e fazê-lo viver, e dar-lhe lugar."
"Some readers report that if you take a hard right at the third shelf past the study carrels you'll find Invisible Cities -- a tome, they report unanimously, of 165 pages translated from the Italian.
The bibliophile wonders, though, at the diversity of these reports in other respects. Some readers recall Invisible Cities as a novel, others as a poem in free verse; still others insist that it is both. The book is most comparable to Gulliver's Travels, say some readers; no, reply others, it is more like Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Still others interrupt and compare it to an anime -- Kino no Tabi -- or a didactic psychogeography -- Dante's Inferno -- or a work of playful but overconscious intellectualism -- Godel, Escher, Bach. I myself have just read Invisible Cities and can tell you that each of these reports is entirely accurate and also entirely misguided.
Perhaps the sagest conclusion about a work called by such different names is that it is impossible, that Invisible Cities is a chimera of an imagination too long deprived of chimeras. Yet once conceived by one such fevered imagination, if such a work did not exist it would become necessary to create it, as a wise man once said on a different topic. And thus the Invisible Cities stir, I can say, before those with eyes to see them."
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