Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Penguin Modern Classics) (UK Edition)

'Words connect the visible track to the invisible thing ... likea fragile makeshift bridge cast across the void'With imagination and wit, Italo Calvino sought to define thevirtues of the great literature of the past in order to shape thevalues of the future. His effervescent last works, left unfinishedat his death, were the Charles Eliot Norton lectures, which he wasdue to deliver at Harvard in 1985-86. These surviving draftsexplore the literary concepts closest to his heart: Lightness,Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and Visibility (Constancy wasto be the sixth), in serious yet playful essays that reveal hisdebt to the comic strip and the folktale. This collection, now in afluent and supple new translation, is a brilliant précis of a greatwriter whose legacy will endure through the millennium headdressed.Translated by Geoffrey Brock'The book I give most to people is Six Memos for the NextMillennium' Ali Smith'Wonderful . . . full of wit and erudition' DailyTelegraph