Book description
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Castle of Crossed Destinies as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
As a lover of fairytales, I love the premise of The Castle of Crossed Destinies and that tarot cards appear visually down the margins of the pages. Novelist Italo Calvino places us in two settings: a castle, and a tavern. Guests traveling through the woods arrive to discover they have lost their ability to speak so they use tarot cards to “show” their stories. The narrator translates those cards (reliably or unreliably—you decide). A tarot card grid appears for the stories in the Tavern of Crossed Destinies section of the book that lays out plot possibilities. I love the visual…
From Tania's list on tarot improvisation for writers and artists.
A group of disparate Medieval travellers finds themselves marooned in a spooky castle in the middle of a forest. Some strange enchantment means they’re unable to speak, so each tells their tale through the medium of the Tarot. I love Calvino – the kind of stone-cold genius who made everything look easy – and I love this book, which immerses you deep within the forest: an almost mythical realm where anything feels possible.
From Darragh's list on where the forest feels like a character.
If you love The Castle of Crossed Destinies...
Cyborg Fever
From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.…
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