“Invisible Cities”
Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities is a novel consisting of short stories describing imaginary cities. Each city has unique geographical and physical characteristics distincting from each other.
Discussion Questions
- It is a woman’s right to roam around freely on the street without having to fear of getting raped by a stranger. Are there any ways for women to feel safe on streets alone? Or to suppress men temptations?
- In one of the chapters it says “the city doesn’t tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand written in the corners of the streets”. What would happen if we left the buildings, the city exactly the same as it was and did not abolish or renew anything? (No new technology, no new inventions…)
I’m personally not fond of this novel since it seemed as if the stories were all over the place. However, if I knew beforehand that this was a book consisting of a collection of short stories rather than just one story divided into segments, it would’ve made more sense. On the other note there are a few sentences that struck me to the most: “How many steps make up the streets rising like stairways” and “outside, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds”.
