Compiled by Italo Calvino, one of the essential writers of the twentieth century (and editor of the best-selling Italian Folktales), Fantastic Tales is a rich and wide-ranging collection of twenty-six classic, uncanny tales from the nineteenth century written by an intriguing panoply of European and American authors. Master storyteller himself, Calvino has contributed an informative introduction to the collection, and an engaging précis to each story.

As Calvino writes in Fantastic Tales, which traces the genre from its roots in German Romanticism to the ghost stories of Henry James: "The fantastic tale is one of the most characteristic products of nineteenth-century narrative. For us, it is also one of the most significant. . . . As it relates to our sensibility today, the supernatural element at the heart of these stories always appears freighted with meaning, like the revolt of the unconscious, the repressed, the forgotten. . . . In this we see the modern dimension of the fantastic, the reason for its triumphant resurgence in our times."

Fantastic Tales is a fantastically canonical anthology assembled by an editor who, in the words of Salman Rushdie, "possesses the power of seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds and then bringing their dreams back to life. "

Italo Calvino's works include The Road to San Giovanni, Numbers in the Dark, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, The Baron in the Trees, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar. Calvino died in 1985.

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。