A beautiful new illustrated hardcover in the Mariner Classics line: Italo Calvino’s beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor’s travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory.

With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed…

In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: stories about memory and desire, art and creation, life and death. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor realizes these fantastic places are more familiar than they appear.

With a brilliant new introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr, and dreamlike illustrations of the cities interspersed throughout, this edition breathes new life into Calvino’s classic, a celebration of the story’s profound invention and enduring insight.