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The Castle Of Crossed Destinies
The Castle Of Crossed Destinies
Jun 1, 2025 9:58 AM

Author:Italo Calvino

The Castle Of Crossed Destinies

A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of all human consciousness.

Reviews

A work that celebrates storytelling… Magical.

—— Fiona Wilson , The Times

The interlinking of tales is incredibly complex and subtle: a history of all human consciousness through the myths of Oedipus, Parsifal, Faust, Hamlet and so on. The Castle of Crossed destinies is a shamelessly original work of art-beautiful in the sense that it is the careful statement of an artist we have learned to trust

—— New Yorker

Italo Calvino has advanced far beyond his American and English contemporaries. As they continue to look for the place where the spiders make their nests, Calvino has not only found this special place but learned how himself to make fantastic webs of prose to which all things adhere

—— Gore Vidal

The marriage of the verbal and the visual in The Castle of Crossed Destinies seems almost prodigious. It is as if sulpher and mercury had at last fused into gold

—— Times Literary Supplement

Sabbath explodes some mad genie out of his bottle... Sabbath's Theater has more firestorming prose than any other novel I have read this year

—— Observer

A work of near-heroic vitality and cunning

—— Sunday Telegraph

Absolutely filthy book with one of the most unpleasantly priapic and desperate anti-heroes in modern literature. A delight

—— Nigel Lindsay , Daily Express

This is the first of Roth’s late masterworks, and the most powerful

—— Orlando Figes , The Week

[American Pastoral] is gorgeously written with passages of breathtaking beauty filled with wisdom and pathos

—— Sarfraz Manzoor , Week

A simple beautiful ending to a deeply sombre book

—— Scotland on Sunday

There is enough plot for several novels here (enough sex for dozens), all vividly conveyed in the author's excitable style... Her many fans will not be disappointed

—— Literary Review

Harris does it again with this brilliantly told tale.

—— THE SUN

Voluptuous helpings of magic, mystery, love and, of course, mouthwatering discriptions of her favourite chocolates, combine to make a rich, satisfying story that should keep you riveted to your sun lounger page after page

—— SHE magazine

The Lollipop Shoes is a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

...the magic still enchants

—— MAIL ON SUNDAY

...a sumptuous treat.

—— HEAT Magazine, May 2007

...a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair. Harris is a delicious treat.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

This novel has the richness of the best quality dark chocolate.

—— INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Sparkling black comedy

—— Play

Pearson is a hilarious author who captures the guilt and the exhaustion of the working mother's life perfectly

—— Dublin Daily

It's the incisive details and Pearson's vivid writing that propel the story

—— New York Times Books

Smart book...great fun

—— New York Times

Pearson is insightful, witty and full of fun

—— Daily Telegraph

Wonderfully warm, witty and intelligent

—— Sunday independent

A Bible for the working woman

—— Oprah Winfrey

Her social observation is unerringly accurate...so beautifully written that it brought tears to my eyes, as well as a wry smile

—— Daily Telegraph

Pearson...to write a novel...that has already sold a gazillion copies and is going to become a film. Hats off to you, madam!

—— Ok Magazine

She will...make you laugh

—— Culture, Sunday Times

Pearson...has made it all fresh again

—— Time

Entertaining, compulsively readable, and brilliantly written

—— Daily Candy

Hilarious and...poignant

—— Publisher's Weekly

This terrific novel is alternately hilarious and sad

—— Upfront

It may change your life

—— The Observer

Pearson is a very witty and moving writer. Her prose is spare and skilful...waspish truisms and spot-on social observations

—— Daily Express

Intelligent, witty and of-the-moment, it mixes sassy, brittle perceptions with barefaced sentimentality

—— The Herald, Glasgow

Brilliantly captures and defines the mood of the moment...sparkling wit and razor sharp insights

—— XW Magazine

Sharply observed and frequently funny

—— Evening Standard
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