<div><B>“Reading Calvino, you’re constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you’ve never thought of it before. This is highly unnerving: fortunately, you’re usually too busy laughing to go mad.” — Salman Rushdie, </B><I><B>London Review of Books</B></I><BR><br> Reading, writing, translating; the avant-garde and tradition; the fate of the novel: these are some of the themes of <I>The Written World and the Unwritten World</I>. A collection of essays, forewords, articles, interviews, notes, and other occasional pieces, this work displays Calvino’s remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. Drawn from <I>Mondo scritto e mondo non scritto </I>(2002), <I>Sulla fiaba</I> (1988), and uncollected essays, this volume of previously untranslated work — now rendered in English by Ann Goldstein — is a major statement in literary criticism.</div>