Turns the 78 tarot cards to a new purpose, linking word and image to the purposes of narrative. A band of travellers, trapped in an gloomy castle in the heart of a wood, find themselves struck dumb and are only able to converse by using the tarot cards to tell one another how they came to be there.

A collection of fables. It is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. It features a comic story The Argentine Ant.

A collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. It charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disasters with a surrealistic view of city life through the eyes of an outsider.

This is a collection of essays by the Cuban essayist and journalist. His work often seeks to confront the role of reader, author and character and question the form of each in order to explore new literary possibilities.

A triptych of novels in one volume. Viscount Medardo is bisected by a cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, aged 12, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; and Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour.

Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is seeking knowledge. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar's observations render the world afresh.

There was no Italian equivalent to the Brothers Grimm until Italo Calvino collected these folktales from his homeland which transport the reader into a world of adventurers, tricksters, kings, peasants and saints.

This title includes enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. They disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms - and have time for a love life. 'Naturally, we were all there, old Qfwfq said, where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?'.

In this collection of 36 essays, Italo Calvino explores the definition of what is classic literature, and surveys works that range from early modern Europe and antiquity to the 19th century novel and contemporary classics.

This collection of autobiographical essays range from a lyrical portrait of the author's relationship with his father to a perceptive essay on his own youthful obsession with cinema.