“The most joyful reading experience of your life." —Salman Rushdie

The beloved and enchanting classic story collection: Italo Calvino's profound and phenomenally funny and account of the universe as a cosmic joke

Naturally, we were all there, old Qfwfq said, where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?

Travelers jump between the Earth and the moon. The last living dinosaur struggles to exist amid the rise of new mammals. A game of marbles is played using Hydrogen atoms. Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino uses a set of scientific theory and facts to tell the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these thirty-four dazzling stories—collected here in one definitive anthology—relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world. They are an indelible and unfailingly delightful literary achievement.

“Nimble and often hilarious . . . Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I — or anyone, really — can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” — NPR