With this posthumously published anthology--a successor to his bestselling Italian Folktales --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.

Selections include:

E.T.A. Hoffmann--"The Sandman"

G&#233rard de Nerval--"the Enchanted Hand"

Nikolai Gogol--"The Nose"

Edgar Allan Poe--"The Tell-Tale Heart"

Hans Christian Andersen--"The Shadow"

Ambrose Bierce--"Chickamauga"

Robert Louis Stevenson--"The Bottle Imp"

Henry James--"The Friends of the Friends"

H.G. Wells--"The Country of the Blind"

Comprising stories of the supernatural and narratives of the everyday uncanny, Fantastic Tales is a gallery of enchantments, deliciously entertaining yet more disturbing than our most persistent nightmares.

伊塔洛•卡爾維諾（1923-1985）

意大利記者、作傢，一九二三年齣生於古巴，不久隨父母返迴意大利，在聖萊莫定居。第二次世界大戰期間，德國占領意大利北部，卡爾維諾加入瞭抵抗組織。戰爭結束後，根據這段經曆，創作瞭小說《通往蜘蛛巢的小徑》，獲譽頗豐。而後陸續齣版《我們的祖先》三部麯。一九六七年起定居巴黎，與羅蘭•巴特、列維-施特勞斯等人交往密切；齣版《命運交叉的城堡》《看不見的城市》等長篇小說。一九八五年夏，突發腦溢血逝世。