Marco Polo becomes the voice of the empire’s vastness: he describes 55 fictional cities that he visited during his travels in the Khan’s reign. The ruler finds himself overwhelmed by the expansiveness of its Eurasian empire and by the fact that he never visited many parts of it – an allegory of the frugality of power and the anxieties that it causes. The novel is based on an imaginary dialogue between the Venetian explorer Marco Polo and the Tartar Emperor Kublai Khan. Invisible Cities is a utopian novel by Italo Calvino that is considered a masterpiece for its unique approach and structure. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.
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