Under the Jaguar Sun - Softcover

Calvino, Italo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156927942 ISBN 13: 9780156927949

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1990

Synopsis

"The thought . . . called up the flavors of an elaborate and bold cuisine, bent on making the flavors' highest notes vibrate, juxtaposing them in modulations, in chords, and especially in dissonances that would assert themselves as an incomparable experience." -- From Under the Jaguar Sun

These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun." In "A King Listens," a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them. Mordant and deliciously offbeat, this trio of tales is a treat from a master of short fiction.

"[Calvino is] a learned, daring, ingeniously gifted magus . . . Under the Jaguar Sun . . . fuses fable with neuron . . . The reader is likely to salivate." -- Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

About this title

Review:

‘...continues Calvino’s lifelong campaign to add more territory to the empire of the imagination.' -- Time

‘In all three stories, intellectual keenness accompanies intense receptiveness to sensuous nuance’ -- Sunday Times

‘In no one’s work... has the torch of literature flared so brightly or so reliably as it did in Italo Calvino’s immaculate collection of slim volumes’ -- Independent

‘Lean and precise, these dialectical fragments create beauty and profundity from the paradoxes and commonplaces of lived experience’ -- New Statesman

‘The greatest Italian writer in the twentieth century’ -- Guardian

From the Publisher:

In these three witty and fantastical stories, Italo Calvino explores the sensory aptitudes of the body in taste, hearing and smell.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0156927942
• ISBN 13: 9780156927949
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96