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Most Popular Books by Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino is the author of Six Memos for the Next Millennium (2013), Into the War (2014), Italo Calvino (2013), The Uses of Literature (1986), Mister Palomar (1985).

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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.

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].

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.

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.

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

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.

Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities
In Kublai Khan''s garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future.

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.

Our Ancestors

release date: Jan 01, 1992
Our Ancestors
Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne''s knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino''s classic triptych of moral tales, now published in one volume and all displaying the exuberant talent of a master storyteller.

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.

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

T Zero

T Zero
The author''s second collection of imaginative stories about the evolution of the universe transcends the boundaries of space and time while mixing comedy with higher mathematics.

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

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.

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 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.

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.
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