The book "Abandoned Cities" by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities, one of Italo Calvino’s most famous works (1972), is a unique novel marked by a postmodern spirit and vision, which the writer considered “a kind of last love poem for cities”. The book, written, according to Calvino, “like a polymath”, consists of eloquent descriptions of 55 imaginary cities named after women, interspersed with philosophical conversations between the author of these descriptions, the famous medieval traveler Marco Polo, and his listener Kublai Khan. The story, which combines profound poetics with mathematical precision of construction, touches on thematic layers of life and death, time, civilization, culture and memory in the style of a fable.