Romanzi e racconti. Il castello dei destini incrociati

Eight stories give rise to The Castle of Crossed Destinies, first published in 1969 by Franco Maria Ricci in an art book reproducing the deck of Visconti tarots illuminated in the 15th century by Bonifacio Bembo for the dukes of Milan; eight stories form The Tavern of Crossed Destinies, the second novel with a similar structure published together with Castello in a single volume in 1973, with reproductions of the cards in black and white. These were the years in which Calvino experimented with the resources of "surface storytelling," of literature as a combinatorial game, of reading traces, of signs that are arranged on the page following a spatial logic that leaves the reader ample room for interpretation.