Disobeying the injunction to write only ‘what you know’, authors from Bram Stoker to Virginia Woolf have created rich fictional adventures into the unknown
January 2023
The Written World and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino review – exquisite flights of imagination
Book of the day
The Written World and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino review – a box of delights
May 2022
Calvino Nights review – irresistible theatre that sharpens the senses
Based on Italo Calvino folk tales, Kneehigh founder Mike Shepherd’s bounteous show features burning instruments, puppetry and political outrage
September 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 books about space travel
The Italian astronaut chooses her favourite extraterrestrial reading, taking in fiction by Italo Calvino and Stanisław Lem alongside reportage and history
December 2019
Book of the day
The Penguin Book of Oulipo review – writing, a user's manual
Lovers of word games and literary puzzles will relish this indispensable anthology celebrating Perec, Calvino and many others
September 2019
'Everything could go wrong': Invisible Cities takes over Brisbane warehouse in massive show
The multi-faceted adaptation of Italo Calvino’s novel is being billed as Brisbane festival’s most ambitious piece to date
July 2019
The week in theatre: Tree; Invisible Cities; Peter Gynt – review
Tree is less exciting than the row about its authorship
June 2019
How do you bring a derelict Manchester train station back to life?
59 Productions’ adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities will transform Mayfield depot for the Manchester international festival
March 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 books about building cities
From Mary Beard’s Roman history to Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction, Jonathan Carr chooses the best writing about citizens’ eternal challenges
February 2019
‘If Ferrante is a friend, Ginzburg is a mentor’: the complex world of Natalia Ginzburg
Top 10s
Top 10 genre-twisting novels
December 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 fictional booksellers
From Italo Calvino to Iain Sinclair and Alison Bechdel, literary retailers have been at the centre of some wild, dark dramas
March 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 parallel narratives
From Philip Roth to Zadie Smith, Lisa Halliday selects some of the best novels using formal adventures to bridge the ‘impassable gaps’ in our world
August 2016
Nicholas Lezard's choice
Six Memos for the Next Millennium review – Italo Calvino’s Harvard lectures
Nicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: brief, paradoxical and deeply satisfying, these unusual pieces of literary criticism contain a universe
June 2016
Books blog
Ian McEwan's unborn baby – and other strange narrators
Nutshell, his forthcoming novel, is told from inside a mother’s womb. It’s a strikingly unusual point of view – do any others outdo it for oddness?
May 2016
Books blog
Follow the breadcrumbs: why fairytales are magic for modern fiction
Breaking the conventions of literary and genre storytelling, these narratives have appealed to writers from Angela Carter to Helen Oyeyemi
November 2015
The long tale of the British short story
What makes the British short story special? In a trawl through thousands, Philip Hensher found a generous tradition that not only suits established writers but gives a platform to voices on the edge of society
August 2015
Readers recommend
Readers recommend: melancholy songs
Bittersweet, articulate, beautiful or bold? Suggest selections for a special form of sadness in songs for this week’s sorrowful but strangely uplifting topic, says Peter Kimpton
June 2015
Ideas City: New York festival considers the way we fill space
With the theme The Invisible City, a collection of architects, artists and cyberfeminist researchers discussed the way our urban habitat can be improved
