Italo Calvino and Invisible Cities in China: A Narrative Wonder

Nicoletta Pesaro’s chapter “Italo Calvino and Invisible Cities in China: A Narrative Wonder”, has a threefold structure as it delves into the issues of reception, translation and cultural contextualisation. The analysis of the reception of Invisible Cities among Chinese scholars and writers is followed by a comparison of the three existing translations, of which the first two were indirect translations (from English), published in 1991 and 1993, soon after the long period of Maoist isolation when fantastic literature was forbidden, while the most recent one, published in 2001, was translated from Italian. With reference to “translator studies”, Pesaro delineates the three translators’ profiles and provides motivations, interpretations and stylistic choices of their translations as well as an analysis of the editions’ paratextual elements. The analysis sheds light on the privileged position that Calvino’s work in general, and Invisible Cities in particular, enjoys in China, especially among writers and scholars who see themselves reflected in the mirror of Calvino’s writing.