Under the Jaguar Sun     by Italo Calvino, Translated by William Weaver Original title: Sotto il sole giaguaro Original language: Italian Published by Harcourt Pub. Date: 1990 Format: Paperback, 96 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.33 x 8.02 x 5.16 ISBN: 0156927942 Edition: REPRINT List Price: $11.00, £6.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £6.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $8.80 Published by Cape Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 96 pages List Price: £10.99 Not available for ordering Published by Vintage Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 86 pages List Price: £4.99 Not available for ordering Published by Harcourt Brace: NY Pub. Date: 1988 Pub. Place: USA Format: Hardcover, 86 pages Not available for ordering

A short unfinished work but nevertheless a fabulous descent into the world of the senses. This book comes from the period when Calvino was such an established artist that he could experiment and still command an audience. As with Invisible Cities, this is the kind of writing, neither realist nor surreal, neither wholly narrative nor straightforward exposition, that points to the future of the written word.


The first and title story of the three pieces in Under The Jaguar Sun shows a couple communicating with each other by sharing the passionate, exotic tastes of Mexican cuisine, in which two continents’ worth of foodstuffs and culinary traditions meet and clash. Calvino’s clever narration darts between sex and food, whipping the reader up into a fine old state — as it does this couple who travel around Mexico, seemingly trying to devour the whole country. This short but blazing piece manages to be a celebration of so many things: a couple’s complicity with each other, the sensuality of eating, seriously engaged travelling...


The middle story, A King Listens, is an ironic piece about dictatorship, appearances, resistance. The last story, The Name, The Nose, is a perfect salad of bad taste and exquisiteness, a serious meditation on the sense of smell (Calvino’s plan was for a book on the five senses). A narrative that interweaves three parallel stories, it is led by the adventures of Monsieur de Sainte-Caliste, a Parisian gentleman of the nineteenth century who runs an account at Madame Odile’s, a leading parfumerie of the city.

‘And one of her shopgirls, Martine, was already tickling the tip of my ear with her finger wet with patchouli (pressing the sting of her breast, at the same time, beneath my armpit), and Charlotte was extending her arm, perfumed with orris, for me to sniff (in the same fashion, on other occasions, I had examined a whole sampler, arrayed over her body), and Sidonie blew on my hand, to evaporate the drop of eglantine she had put there (between her parted lips I could glimpse her little teeth, whose bites I knew so well), and another, whom I had never seen, a new girl (whom I merely grazed with an absent pinch, preoccupied as I was), aimed an atomizer at me, pressing its bulb, as if inviting me to an amorous skirmish.’ p69