Calvino's masterpiece opens with a scene that's reassuringly commonplace - apparently. A reader goes into a bookshop to buy a book; not any book, but the latest Calvino, the book you are reading about now. Or is it? Are you the reader? Is this the book? Beware. All assumptions are dangerous on this most bewitching switch-back ride to the heart of story-telling.
A devastating, wonderfully ingenious parody of all those dreary best-sellers you buy at the airport . . . it's a "world" novel - a brilliant work of the imagination.
