"One of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature."--Boston Globe
"A brilliant, original approach to literature, a key to Calvino's own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world's greatest writing."--San Francisco Chronicle
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued, and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next...
"One of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature."--Boston Globe
The first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino's important early short story collections
Throughout his stories, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the tales in this collection take place in a World War II-era and postwar Italy tinged with visionary and fablelike qualities. Three novice burglars accidentally break into a pastry shop; a pair of children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock...
The first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino's important early short story collections
A collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of Calvino's approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature
Reading, writing, translating; the avant-garde and tradition; the fate of the novel: these are some of the themes of The Written World and the Unwritten World. A collection of essays, forewords, articles, interviews, notes, and other occasional pieces, this work displays Calvino's remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. Drawn from Mondo scritto e mondo non...
A collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of Calvino's approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature
"We were peering into this darkness, criss-crossed with voices, when the change took place: the only real, great change I've ever happened to witness, and compared to it the rest is nothing." -- from The Complete Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino's beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these thirty-four dazzling stories --...
"We were peering into this darkness, criss-crossed with voices, when the change took place: the only real, great change I've ever happened to wi...
Intricate interior lives are brilliantly explored in these short stories, now presented in one definitive collection as Calvino intended them
In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love--including self-love--are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each...
Intricate interior lives are brilliantly explored in these short stories, now presented in one definitive collection as Calvino intended them
An empty suit of armor is the hero in this witty novella, a picaresque gem--now available in an independent volume for the first time--that brilliantly parodies medieval knighthood.
Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier. In the end, after many surprising turns...
An empty suit of armor is the hero in this witty novella, a picaresque gem--now available in an independent volume for the first time--that brillia...
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures
In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there's no telling the lengths each will go to win.Now available in an independent volume for the first time, this deliciously bizarre novella is...
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures...
A landmark new translation of a Calvino classic, a whimsical, spirited novel that imagines a life lived entirely on its own terms
Cosimo di Rondo, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy--he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass...
A landmark new translation of a Calvino classic, a whimsical, spirited novel that imagines a life lived entirely on its own terms
A spectacular display of this key European writer's early workThis dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts.
A spectacular display of this key European writer's early workThis dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast o...
