Qfwfq, the protean hero of Cosmicomics dexterously moving through time and space, solar systems and geological eras, takes on a new dimension in these tales. Though keeping to his playful ways, he heightens the sense of linkage between prehuman and present-day experience, the biological depth, as it were, of our species. We meet him as a commuter from New Jersey, juggling the potentialities of a geological happening with the actualities of the scene around him. We see him go over a cliff on a weekend outing, seas becoming blood and blood the sea, in a mixture of modern and immemorial experience. In Paris, Qfwfq falls in love with a freckled girl named Priscilla, in what may be called an intercellular relationship.
In the latter part of the book, Qfwfq drops from view and Calvino takes fiction one bound further into the realm of logic and mathematics. Man, lion, and arrow deal dizzyingly with the time/space problem; a chase with intent to murder during rush-hour traffic traces the ultimately saving method in the madness; cross lovers are further crossed by the crazy pattern of highway driving - and so it goes.
The mind is stretched and dazzled by Calvino's fantastic application of scientific concepts to modern life and letters, tossed off airily in impeccably lucid prose. Translated by William Weaver, who received the National Book Award for this translation.

from: Italo Calvino.

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