In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'

• This title is exclusively available from Vintage Classics
• 'Of all the Italian post-war novelists, Italo Calvino is the adventurer. He glitters, impersonal, brilliant and lasting' Financial Times
• 'Whole chapters of unforced poetic prose in which insight and fantasy are perfectly matched-an exquisite world' Observer
• 'Invisible Cities' is perhaps his most beautiful work-the artist seems to have made peace with the tension between man's ideas of the many and the one' New York Review of Books