Numbers in the Dark

Translated by Tim Parks.

With a Preface by Esther Calvino.

'There is true gold here . . . extraordinary' Sunday Times.

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; revolt finally arriving at 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 . . . With touches of the sinister and the comic, the moral and the ridiculous, these dozens of stories are full of brilliance and inventiveness.