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The Burning of the Abominable House (Italian title: ''L'incendio della casa abominevole'') is a short story by the Italian novelist Italo Calvino. It can be considered an experiment of computer-aided literature, where the techniques of combinatorics and constraint-based writing developed by the French writers' gathering Oulipo are applied to the narrative structure rather than just to the syntactic arrangement of a text. == Story Plot == A computer analyst and programmer is hired by an insurance company to reconstitute antecedents and circumstances of a boarding house that has mysteriously burnt to the ground. All four tenants of the house died in the blaze : the Widow Roessler (house owner), her adoptive daughter Ogiva, the young Inigo, and the Uzbek wrestler Belindo Kind. While the police have dismissed the investigation since all the persons involved are dead, the insurance company is determined to investigate the circumstances behind the blaze as each tenant took out life insurance with the company. The only available clue is the charred copybook found in the ruins of the house of which the cover alone has survived. Written on the front is the title, "An Account of the Abominable Deeds Committed in this House" while on the back is an index with twelve entries in alphabetical order: * Blackmail * Drugging * Incitement to Suicide * Knifing * Prostitution * Threatening with a Gun * Tying and Gagging * Rape * Seduction 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Burning of the Abominable House」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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