With this posthumously published anthology--a successor to his bestselling <b>Italian Folktales</b>--Italo Calvino, a contemporary surveyor of the otherwordly, pays homage to twenty-six of his nineteenth-century precursors. The resulting volume is both an education in the history of fantastic literature and a rollercoaster ride of wonder and terror, vampires, ghosts, and the rebellious creatures of our own psyches. <br><br>Selections include:<br><br>E.T.A. Hoffmann--"The Sandman"<br>G&#233rard de Nerval--"the Enchanted Hand"<br>Nikolai Gogol--"The Nose"<br>Edgar Allan Poe--"The Tell-Tale Heart"<br>Hans Christian Andersen--"The Shadow"<br>Ambrose Bierce--"Chickamauga"<br>Robert Louis Stevenson--"The Bottle Imp"<br>Henry James--"The Friends of the Friends"<br>H.G. Wells--"The Country of the Blind"<br><br>Comprising stories of the supernatural and narratives of the everyday uncanny, <b>Fantastic Tales</b> is a gallery of enchantments, deliciously entertaining yet more disturbing than our most persistent nightmares.