Under the Jaguar Sun Paperback – April 5, 1990

I have been a fan of Italo Calvino since college when I read the fascinating If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, so when I read in the Mexico Lonely Planet that he had written a story that was an ode to Mexican food I knew I would have to read Under The Jaguar Sun (1986). This collection of three stories was meant to be a larger collection of stories about the five senses, however Calvino died before the completion of the series. The first story, "Under the Jaguar Sun," delivered and then some with a treaties on taste that made me want to immediately book a flight to Mexico. I like the fact that Calvino includes references to Mexico's bloody past before and after colonization. The other two stories, "A King Listens" (about hearing) and "The Name, the Nose" (about smell) also have their virtues-a lyrical narrative style is among them. This collection was inspirational in a sense since it makes me want to revisit Calvino's oeuvre and read all the other works that I have not read yet (since the only other novel I read was Invisible Cities).

Calvino's short story collection based on the senses of taste, hearing, and smell. These were written later in his lifetime and published posthumously--- seems he hadn't written the stories for sight and touch by the time of his death.As with most of his work, extremely vivid and a little bit disturbing, sensuous and fluid. Calvino was a master of his art.

This is a collection of stories I had read some years ago and finally I have a new copy of a great book…it was in perfect condition and came to me as advertised.

I loved him!!

Unfortunately, Calvino died before he could finish this series on the five senses. I wonder what he would have come up with seeing and touching, since each of these three stories are so different and well written. "The man, the nose" are three stories intertwined: a French nobleman who is desperately looking for the woman whose smell so fascinated him at a customs ball; a prehistoric ape-man trying to identify among the tribe the female whose smell captured him; and a British rocker who wakes up after an orgy and copulates with a woman whose smell atrracts him from among the sleeping bodies scattered on the floor.The second one is "Under the jaguar sun", the story of an erotic encounter between a couple of lovers, as they eat the spicy and exotic food of Oaxaca, in Mexico. The third is "A King listens", the story of an illegitimate ruler whose deposition he acknowledges by the sounds he hears while sitting on his room; an allegory about the fate of dictators.Very good tales about the senses. Calvino uses his powerful writing to explore items we constantly use but seldom pay much attention to.

I think that these three short stories act as a study on perception and awareness. Each story embodies a sense: In the first story, "Under The Jaguar Sun," Calvino writes about the sense of taste; in the second, "A King Listens," he writes about the sense of hearing; and finally, in "The Name, The Nose," he writes about the olfactory sense. Reading all three in sequence, the stories take on the texture of a novella (Calvino, unfortunately, died before he could complete two more stories of senses).Each story is entirely different. What I enjoyed about the second story is the Poe-like ("The Pit And The Pendulum") Dostoyevsky-esque ("Notes From The Underground") nature of a King's interior monologue of living as a monarch. The Palace becomes corporeal and the mannerisms of regality become personality traits. But what the king hears takes him into his own thoughts, leading him into an implosion of spirit.Pick it up if your are a Calvino fan. If not, reading it might be a good way to become a Calvino fan.

A collection of 3 short stories. Each deals with one of the senses and were going to be part of a projected suite with, presumably, some kind of framing device. Calvino was one of those happy people that can write works that stretch the intellect without altogether sacrificing story, plot and characterisation. The middle tale ('A King Listens') is unsuccessful, ending up as nothing more than an experiment - who knows whether it would have improved had he time to revise it, it was the last thing he wrote before his death. But the opening and closing stories are much better, especially the latter ('The Name, The Nose'), although still not prime Calvino (try 'Adam One Afternoon', 'Invisible Cities' or 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' if you're new to the writer and want to know what his talents can *really* produce). 'Under the Jaguar Sun', the title story set in Mexico, deals with taste and develops the idea of human relationships as a form of canibalism in which we digest our partner to taste their thoughts, feelings, desires and wishes in order to make them part of ourselves. 'The Name, The Nose' takes three characters (a Proustian aesthete, a prehistoric apeman on the verge of walking upright and a drug-addled rock musician) that are all in love with an unknown woman identifiable only by her scent, eventually discovering that she has died since making love with them. Despite the differences in the characters, their tales are interlinked surpringly smoothly and satisfyingly. However, due to its posthumous nature, the book is very short, only 83 pages of big type, and so can only be recommended to Calvino fans.

Very nice short stories, really wish we got the finished version with the other sense. The second story is really incredible to me and brought light to a new perspective I never thought of and really heightened that experience with the sense selected. Recommend to read for that one alone

Awesome!