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New Releases by Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino is the author of Invisible Cities [50th Anniversary Edition] (2025), Fiabe italiane (2023), Si una noche de invierno un viajero (2021), Last Comes the Raven (2021), Les ciutats invisibles (2016).

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Invisible Cities [50th Anniversary Edition]

release date: Mar 18, 2025
Invisible Cities [50th Anniversary Edition]
Illustrated 50th Anniversary Edition - With an introduction by #1 New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anthony Doerr A beautiful new illustrated hardcover in the Mariner Classics line: Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels--a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed... In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo--Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: stories about memory and desire, art and creation, life and death. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor realizes these fantastic places are more familiar than they appear. With a brilliant new introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr, and dreamlike illustrations of the cities interspersed throughout, this edition breathes new life into Calvino's classic, a celebration of the story's profound invention and enduring insight.

Fiabe italiane

release date: May 01, 2023
Fiabe italiane
«Io credo questo: le fiabe sono vere. Sono, prese tutte insieme, nella loro sempre ripetuta e sempre varia casistica di vicende umane, una spiegazione generale della vita, nata in tempi remoti e serbata nel lento ruminio delle coscienze contadine fino a noi; sono il catalogo dei destini che possono darsi a un uomo e a una donna, soprattutto per la parte di vita che appunto è il farsi d'un destino: la giovinezza, dalla nascita che sovente porta in sé un auspicio o una condanna, al distacco dalla casa, alle prove per diventare adulto e poi maturo, per confermarsi come essere umano. E in questo sommario disegno, tutto.» Italo Calvino

Si una noche de invierno un viajero

release date: May 05, 2021
Si una noche de invierno un viajero
«La empresa de tratar de escribir novelas “apócrifas”, que me imagino escritas por un autor que no soy yo y que no existe, la llevé a sus últimas consecuencias en este libro. Es una novela sobre el placer de leer novelas; el protagonista es el lector, que empieza diez veces a leer un libro que por vicisitudes ajenas a su voluntad no consigue acabar. Tuve que escribir, pues, el inicio de diez novelas de autores imaginarios, todos en cierto modo distintos de mí y distintos entre sí: una novela toda sospechas y sensaciones confusas; una toda sensaciones corpóreas y sanguíneas; una introspectiva y simbólica; una revolucionaria existencial; una cínico-brutal; una de manías obsesivas; una lógica y geométrica; una erótico-perversa; una telúrico-primordial; una apocalíptica alegórica. Más que identificarme con el autor de cada una de las diez novelas, traté de identificarme con el lector...» Italo Calvino

Last Comes the Raven

release date: Jan 01, 2021
Last Comes the Raven
The first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino's important early short story collections Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection--one of Calvino's earliest--take place in a World War II-era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller's later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits--and his life--when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Throughout, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. Stories from Last Comes the Raven have been published in translation, but the collection as a whole has never appeared in English. This volume, including several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein, is an important addition to Calvino's legacy.

Les ciutats invisibles

release date: Mar 22, 2016
Les ciutats invisibles
El llibre més suggeridor d'Italo Calvino. El Gran Khan, l'emperador dels tàrtars, té a la cort Marco Polo, que li descriu en un seguit d'informes les ciutats que ha conegut en les seves expedicions a l'interior de l'imperi. En aquests informes succints i precisos, el viatger venecià parla dels homes que van construir aquelles ciutats, de la forma que tenen, de les relacions entre els seus habitants i de totes les seves característiques. Unes característiques que potser ha vist només Marco Polo, capaç de fixar-se en els detalls més menuts, de mirar allò que no mira ningú més, de veure allò que als altres els resulta invisible. O potser és que aquestes ciutats existeixen únicament en el relat que en fa Marco Polo al Gran Khan, o en els jocs combinatoris d'aquest llibre extraordinari amb què Italo Calvino obsequia tots els seus lectors. «Em sembla que he escrit un mena de darrer poema d'amor a les ciutats, quan és cada vegada més difícil viure-les com a ciutats.» Italo Calvino

Why Read the Classics?

release date: Dec 16, 2014
Why Read the Classics?
This collection of essays by the acclaimed author of Cosmicomics offers a fascinating, personal journey through some of literature's greatest works. Classics, according to Italo Calvino, are not only works of enduring cultural value, but also personal touchstones. They are the books we are always rereading in order to understand our world and ourselves. Here, Calvino introduces more than thirty works from his own ideal library in essays of warmth, humor, and striking insight. He discusses great authors ranging from Homer to Jorge Luis Borges, and from Charles Dickens to the Persian folklorist Nezami. Whether tracing the links between Ovid's Metamorphoses and Alain Robbe-Grillet's objectivity, discovering the origins of science fiction in the writings of Cyrano de Bergerac, or convincing us that the Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda's works are like artichokes, Calvino offers a new perspective on beloved favorites and introduces us to hidden gems. "This book serves as a welcome reminder that the great works are great because they can mean so much to readers, and Calvino is a most knowledgeable guide to all the best destinations."— San Francisco Chronicle

Into the War

release date: Jan 01, 2014
Into the War
"These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice."--from cover, page [4].

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

release date: Apr 04, 2013
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death. The surviving drafts explore of the concepts of Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth) in serious yet playful essays that reveal Calvino's debt to the comic strip and the folktale. With his customary imagination and grace, he sought to define the virtues of the great literature of the past in order to shape the values of the future. This collection is a brilliant précis of the work of a great writer whose legacy will endure through the millennium he addressed. Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in1985, of a brain hemorrhage.

Numbers in the Dark

release date: Apr 04, 2013
Numbers in the Dark
Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino's extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables; a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat; a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts; a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts; and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma ... Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in1985, of a brain hemorrhage.

The Road to San Giovanni

release date: Apr 04, 2013
The Road to San Giovanni
A collection of five autobiographical essays by one of the masters of Italian literature In these five elegant autobiographical meditations Italo Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance. Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks

The Path to the Spiders' Nests

release date: Apr 04, 2013
The Path to the Spiders' Nests
Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war.

Italo Calvino

release date: Jan 01, 2013
Italo Calvino
This is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide fame with such books as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveler. But he was also an influential literary critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal, Leonardo Sciascia, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luciano Berio.

Difficult Loves and Other Stories

release date: Dec 23, 2010
Difficult Loves and Other Stories
A spectacular display of this key European writer's early work This dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as the thirteen tales from his Difficult Loves collection this volume also includes 'Smog', 'A Plunge into Real Estate' and 'The Argentine Ant'. 'The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the occasional incandescence of vision, and a certain loveable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading' Margaret Atwood 'If this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better' Gore Vidal on 'The Argentine Ant'

Hermit in Paris

release date: Aug 10, 2004
Hermit in Paris
From one of modern literature’s most captivating and elusive masters comes a posthumous volume of thoughtful, elegant, and quick-witted autobiographical writings, all previously unpublished in English. Here is Italo Calvino paying homage to his literary influences and tracing the evolution of his signature style. Here are his reminiscences of Italy’s antifascist resistance and the frenzy of politics and ideas of the postwar era. The longest and most delightfully revealing section of the book is Calvino’s diary of his travels in the United States in 1959 and 1960, which show him marveling at color TV, wrinkling his nose at the Beats, and reeling at the outpouring of racial hatred attending a civil rights demonstration in Alabama. Overflowing with insight and amusement, Hermit in Paris is an invaluable addition to the Calvino legacy.

Difficult Loves and Marcovaldo

release date: Jun 13, 2002

Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno

release date: Jan 01, 2002
Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno
"Questo è il primo romanzo che ho scritto; quasi posso dire la prima cosa che ho scritto, se si eccettuano pochi racconti. Che impressione mi fa, a riprenderlo in mano adesso? Più che come un'opera mia la leggo come un libro nato anonimamente dal clima generale d'un'epoca, da una tensione morale, da un gusto letterario che era quello in cui la nostra generazione si riconosceva, dopo la fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale" (dalla prefazione di Italo Calvino).

The Path to the Nest of Spiders

release date: Jan 01, 1993
The Path to the Nest of Spiders
Italo Calvino's debut novel, first published in 1947, tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at the lowlife bar where he amuses the grownups. When his friends dare him to steal a pistol from a Nazi soldier, Pin sets off on a series of picaresque adventures with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of this band, seen through the eyes of the child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian Resistance, but also an insightful coming-of-age story. The Path to the Nest of Spiders is a bold, adventurous first novel, animated by the formidable imagination that was to make Italo Calvino one of the most respected writers of the second half of this century.

Under the Jaguar Sun

release date: Jan 01, 1988
Under the Jaguar Sun
One of Italy's greatest and most popular writers offers three witty, fantastical stories, each dominated by one of three senses--taste, hearing, or smell.

The Uses of Literature

The Uses of Literature
In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume. Translated by Patrick Creagh. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Mister Palomar

Mister Palomar
Italo Calvino's last fictional work is a witty, elegant, fantastic rendering of the ultimate observer, whose name, Mr. Palomar, deliberately evokes the famous telescope. "Beautiful, nimble, solitary feats of imagination" (The New York Times Book Review). Calvino is the acclaimed author of Difficult Loves and Invisible Cities.

Difficult Loves

Difficult Loves
In a collection of stories written during the 1940s and 1950s, the author captures moments of revelation in the lives of ordinary people, instants blending recognition and alarm as deceptions and illusions are laid bare.

Adam, One Afternoon and Other Stories

Adam, One Afternoon and Other Stories
The world of Calvino is a world of fable, but he uses its mechanisms to focus with unerring precision on human reality. Nature in these stories has a magical quality in the flight of a crow, the iridescent track of a snail, the sideways leap of a stray cat but the magic can encompass both enchantment and terror.

Difficult Loves ; Smog ; A Plunge Into Real Estate

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino's classic, multifaceted novel about writing and readers.

Italian Folktales

Italian Folktales
Retells two hundred traditional Italian tales, including the stories of a fearless little man, a prince who married a frog, and a woman who lived on wind.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

The Castle of Crossed Destinies
"A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their tales. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness."--Goodreads
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