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Italo Calvino’s first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), adheres to established standards of Italian neorealism, but his subsequent works travel in a radically different direction, tinkering with the idea of how authors and readers collaborate on making meaning. Invisible Cities (1972) deconstructs The Travels of Marco Polo, originally published in the 13th century and falling squarely into the genre of travel literature. If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979) embraces postmodernism’s ludic quality by directly addressing the reader — An author using second person? Anathema! — and by chronicling the search for a book that eludes discovery. Both works entertain; both works challenge; both works leave the reader chuckling and musing. Reading these two novellas is a trip worth taking, even if you are left wondering how you got to where you ended up and whether you have actually moved at all.

A retired high-school English teacher, Instructor Michelle Miller found a niche for herself in exploring World Literature in her classrooms. Introduced to Italo Calvino in a graduate-school course on postmodernism, she incorporated the two novellas featured in this class into her teaching, much to her students’ delight. Michelle is eager to revisit Calvino with other readers who enjoy literature that does not slavishly adhere to traditional narrative conventions.