The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Semiotic fantasy novel by Italo Calvino, published in Italian in 1973 as Il castello dei destini incrociati. It consists of a series of short tales gathered into two sections, The Castle of Crossed Destinies and The Tavern of Crossed Destinies. The novel concerns two groups of travelers through a forest, both of which have lost the power to speak as the result of traumatic events. One group is spending the night in a tavern, the other in a castle. In each place, the travelers tell the stories of their lives, using tarot cards instead of words. A narrator at each place interprets the cards for the reader, but since the tarot cards are subject to multiple interpretations, the stories the narrators offer are not necessarily the stories intended by the mute storytellers.

About Author	Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics col
Author	Italo Calvino
Book Series	Harvest Book Series
Format	Ebook
ISBN	9780156154550
Language	English
Pages	103
Publication Date	01-01-1979
Publisher	HarperCollins

1 review for The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Rated 5 out of 5

dubliner (verified owner) – 04-30-2025

I had really high hopes for this book, and honestly, I was just a tad disappointed, but that’s more on me than the actual writing.
I was looking for something with loads of plot, and substance, and while this is interesting it felt at times a bit contrived. I love the tarot, and the lore of it, and was really looking forward to this story.
The crux of the story is that a bunch of people are sitting around a table and silently explaining how they got to this castle via the tarot cards. The narrator then tries to piece together the stories these folks are telling through the cards, and goes to great lengths to assure the reader that perhaps there are pieces missing and that it is just his view of their own stories.
Interesting principle, but on the whole it delves too deeply into the realm of the ‘unreliable narrator’, where I as a reader was left with the question of ‘What really is the truth here’? This book is actually two different stories; the Castle of Crossed Destinies, where everyone is gathered in a castle and talking about their stories, and the Tavern of Crossed Destinies, where the tarot cards are used to explain the stories of Shakespeare and Oedipus Rex. The latter seems contrived and bland, whereas the former is missing something. There’s nothing there to make the reader truly feel for or care much about the characters, and so the whole story seems like a drop in the bucket whereas it could have been so much more. But, I soldier on to read all of Calvino’s works, because for what it’s worth I do enjoy his writing style and I think he has very important things to say, even if they don’t always fall on the mark.

Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.