The Written World and the Unwritten World

“Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before. This is highly unnerving: fortunately, you're usually too busy laughing to go mad.” — Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books Reading, writing, translating; the avant-garde and tradition; the fate of the novel: these are some of the themes ofThe Written World and the Unwritten World. A collection of essays, forewords, articles, interviews, notes, and other occasional pieces, this work displays Calvino's remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. Drawn from Mondo scritto e mondo non scritto (2002), Sulla fiaba (1988), and uncollected essays, this volume of previously untranslated work — now rendered in English by Ann Goldstein — is a major statement in literary criticism.