Why Read the Classics?

Enthusiasm and intelligence: these are the essential qualities of the critic. Calvino, himself a novelist of rare quality, possessed both generously. This is a book to read for itself, and also because it will send you back to other books to read, either again in a new way, or for the first time... Superb

Daily Telegraph

This volume itself is a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities or rereading

The Times

A master’s guidance on everything from the ancient Greeks to Ernest Hemingway, proving that "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say." This timeless description applies to Calvino’s own books too

John Self