The Bookshop of Crossed Destinies...

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192 Books cordially invites you to a special reading of
Enrique Enriquez: The Bookshop of Crossed Destinies
Presenting THE JEAN DODAL TAROT
Wednesday, March 10, 7PM


In 1973, Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a novel in which characters who cannot speak to each other recount their tales using tarot cards. The book is divided in two sections, each of them referring to a different tarot deck. The first half of the book, the ‘Castle’, is based on the Visconti Sforza tarot. The second half, called the ‘Tavern’, is based on the Marseilles tarot. In a volume which sets out to explore how narratives are created, Calvino again demonstrates his talent for depicting haunted, fantastic landscapes.

On the occasion of the re-edition of the Jean Dodal tarot, the second-oldest Marseilles tarot known, Enrique Enriquez will be re-enacting Calvino’s feat, turning 192 Books into a Bookshop of Crossed Destinies. After reading a few passages from Calvino’s book, guests will be encouraged to tell their tales using tarot cards. Working as the narrator, Enriquez will put these tales into words.


Italo Calvino was a journalist and writer of experimental prose whose inventive fabulations made him one of the most important Italian fiction writers of the 20th century. Calvino's career as a writer spanned nearly four decades. The idea for “The Castle of Crossed Destinies” came to him after he attended a lecture by semiologist Paolo Fabbri, titled: “The Narratives of Cartomancy and The Language of Emblems.”

Originally printed in 1710, the Jean Dodal tarot is considered a source tarot, after which many subsequent tarots were modeled. Only two surviving copies exists: one at the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and the other one at the British Museum. The Jean Dodal is part of the Marseille Tarot family, which is the one Calvino used to create half of the stories in the book. This re-edition, made by master cardmaker Jean-Claude Flornoy, makes the Jean Dodal imagery available to the general public for the first time in 300 years.

Enrique Enriquez is a tarot reader who explores the connections between medieval draftsmanship and current cognitive science. His interest focus on the dynamics of meaning-making and on our ontological need for fictions to map our reality. His interest in the tarot as a poetic device has been greatly stimulated by Calvino’s “Castle of Crossed Destinies.”

192 Books
192 10th Avenue, at 21st Street
RSVP: 212.255.4022
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