"A tale is born from an image,” he said in an interview in 1983, “and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal.”
About this book
Calvino’s collection is arranged chronologically, and in this way falls naturally into the two categories he sets in his introduction, the visionary fantastic of the nineteenth century and the everyday fantastic of the nineteenth century. Calvino also marks out the fantastic genre as distinct and separate from the supernatural. The best common denominator to these widely varying tales is their roots in the everyday, the sudden exposure of something amiss in the natural order of things is the undercurrent here. Applicability and excellence demonstrably constitute an important part of Calvino’s criteria in his selections, but he also concocts an exotic and international mix of the famous and lesser known writers, famous and uncelebrated works. Each short story has an individual introduction by Calvino which points up outstanding features while marking the progress of the fantastic genre. "A tale is born from an image," he said in an interview in 1983, "and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal."
