Description

Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino’s extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables; a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat; a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts; a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts; and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma …

Publisher Review

'The author's command of detail and his fine, inventive imagination, his ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out, his awareness of the comic capacity of everyday life, are always ready to surprise and delight.' Literary Review