In these three witty and fantastical stories, Italo Calvino explores the sensory aptitudes of the body in taste, hearing and smell. 'Each story continues Calvino's lifelong campaign to add more territory to the empire of the imagination; each discloses marvels in regions that we presumed exhausted' - "Time". 'In all three stories, intellectual keenness accompanies intense receptiveness to sensuous nuance' - "Sunday Times."