The Distance of the Moon

by Italo Calvino

ISBN: 978-0-241-33910-7

First published 1965

56 pages

Publisher: Penguin Modern / Penguin Random House UK

5 / 5 Stars

Writing in a clear and lucid style Calvino mixes astrophysics with stories of human longing and emotion. Each story starts with a scientific fact about the universe, written in italics, then proceeds with a story from our narrator, a peculiar fellow called Qfwfq.

There are 4 stores in this compendium,

• The Distance to the Moon
• Without Colours
• As Long As The Sun Lasts
• Implosion

The characters are wonderful as well. The cousin who doesn’t speak, Mrs Vhdvhd, the wife of the Captain, Grandpa Eggg and Grandma Ggge. Ayl who hides underground and who Qfwfq falls in love with.

And the reason for 5 Stars? Here is an example, a wonderful turn of phrase:

To explode or implode – said Qfwfq – that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to expand one’s energies in space without restraint, or to crush them into a dense inner concentration and, by ingesting, cherish them. To steal away, to vanish; no more; to hold within oneself every gleam, every ray, deny oneself every vent, suffocating in the depths of the soul the conflicts that so idly trouble it, give them their quietus; to hide oneself, to obliterate oneself: perchance to reawaken elsewhere, changed.

There are more stories in the full version.