Though probably best known for his fiction, Calvino was an excellent all-round man of letters, an essayist in the old urbane, non-academic style, and also exceptionally widely read. Essays and extended reviews written over several decades make up this collection, which ranges from classical literature (Homer, Xenophon, Ovid, Pliny) to Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens and Henry James, and finally to Modernists such as Montale, Borges and Pavese. Apart from the sheer pleasure of a cool, elegant, ultra-literate style, Calvino offers the kind of old-style erudition which does not display itself and lies just under the surface. Though at times faintly bland and detached in tone, this is a volume which should lend itself to several readings.