You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer’s error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.

‘Breathtakingly inventive’ David Mitchell

VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful

Calvino’s war-torn Italy is vivid, intense, almost hyper-real. A trio of greedy burglars rob a pastry shop, a boy offers a girl presents of toads and insects from the garden, a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In every story he reveals the hidden meaning beneath the surface of everyday life, and the ludicrousness of war.

Some stories from Last Comes the Raven have been previously available in the collection Adam, One Afternoon. This new expanded collection includes several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein and is an important addition to Calvino’s legacy.

‘In Last Comes the Raven, a collection of early stories, we find the man behind the magician’ New Yorker

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.

Twelve enchanting and fantastical stories about the evolution of the universe from the giant of Italian literature, Italo Calvino. His characters – whether human, dinosaur or mollusc – disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms – and have time for a love life.

‘A landmark in fiction, the work of a master’ – Ursula K Le Guin

From the age of twelve, the Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo makes his home among ash, elm, magnolia, plum and almond, living up in the trees. He walks through paths made from the twisted branches of olive, makes his bed in a holly oak, bathes in a fountain constructed from poplar bark. An aerial library holds the books with which he educates himself in philosophy and mathematics. Suspended among the leaves, the Baron adventures with bandits and pirates, conducts a passionate love affair, and watches the Age of Enlightenment pass by beneath him.

‘The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists’ The Times

‘Naturally, we were all there, – dld Qfwfq said, – where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?’

The Cosmicomics tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of ‘cosmic know-it-all’ Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a dinosaur, a mollusc, a steamer captain and a moon milk gatherer, among others. This is the first complete edition in English of Italo Calvino’s funny, whimsical and delightful stories, which blend scientific fact, flights of fancy, parody and wordplay to show the strangeness and the wonders of the world.

Italo Calvino (1923-1985), one of Italy’s finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. Among his other works published in Penguin Modern Classics are Italian Folktales, Hermit in Paris, Into the War, The Path to the Spiders’ Nests, Numbers in the Dark, Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Why Read the Classics?

If you liked The Complete Cosmicomics, you might enjoy Jorge Luis Borges’ Fictions, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘The complete and definitive collection … a masterpiece’
Gilbert Adair, Evening Standard

‘Dazzling … a book of revelation’
Tim Adams, Observer

‘If you have never read Cosmicomics, you have before you the most joyful reading experience of your life’
Salman Rushdie

‘A landmark in fiction, the work of a master’
Ursula K Le Guin, Guardian

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 is a captivating meditation on culture, language, time, memory and the nature of human experience.

‘Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose… The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island’ Jeanette Winterson

‘A subtle and beautiful meditation’ Sunday Times