Product Description

Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino’s extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables; a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat; a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts; a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts; and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma …

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39276 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'The author's command of detail and his fine, inventive imagination, his ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out, his awareness of the comic capacity of everyday life, are always ready to surprise and delight.' Literary Review

Literary Review
‘The author’s ... ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out ... always ready to surprise and delight’

Sunday Times
‘There is true gold here…extraordinary’

Customer Reviews

enlightening
This collection of fictions from across Calvino's career makes an stunning testament to his genius. calvino's 'stories' (for want of a better word, because he plays with many forms) range wildly, from the fabular to the faux-political tract to the dazzlingly metaphorical to the frankly recollected. they all convince. their brevity means even the shortest attention span can enjoy. in fact, 'glaciation', perhaps my favourite text in the (translated) english language, is also three pages long.
in a word: revlationary.