Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was born on October 15, 1923, in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, and later grew up in Italy. Renowned for his imaginative storytelling and creative use of language, Calvino made a significant impact on contemporary literature with his innovative narrative techniques. His work often explores themes of fantasy, storytelling, and reality, earning him a lasting place in the literary world.
Personal Name: Italo Calvino
Birth: 15 Oct 1923
Death: 19 Sep 1985
Italo Calvino Books
(68 Books)
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.
L'impresa di cercare di scrivere romanzi 'apocrifi', cioè che immagino siano scritti da un autore che non sono io e che non esiste, l'ho portata fino in fondo nel mio libro 'Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore'. E un romanzo sul piacere di leggere romanzi; protagonista è il Lettore, che per dieci volte comincia a leggere un libro che per vicissitudini estranee alla sua volontà non riesce a finire. Ho dovuto dunque scrivere l'inizio di dieci romanzi d'autori immaginari, tutti in qualche modo diversi da me e diversi tra loro ... Più che d'identificarmi con l'autore di ognuno dei dieci romanzi, ho cercato d'identificarmi col lettore: rappresentare il piacere della lettura d'un dato genere, più che il testo vero e proprio. Ma soprattutto ho cercato di dare evidenza al fatto che ogni libro nasce in presenza d'altri libri, in rapporto e confronto ad altri libri.
Enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. "Naturally, we were all there, - old Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?"--Publisher description.
"Italo Calvino was only twenty-three when he first published this bold and imaginative novel. It 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 a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans.
Calvino's portrayal of these characters, seen through the eyes of a child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian resistance but an insightful coming-of-age story.
Updated to include changes from Calvino's definitive Italian edition, previously censored passages, and his newly translated, unabridged preface - in which Calvino brilliantly critiques and places into historical context his own youthful work - The Path to the Spiders' Nests is animated by the formidable imagination that has made Italo Calvino one of the most respected writers of our time."--BOOK JACKET.
Il romanzo racconta le vicende di Cosimo di Rondò, vissuto nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo in piccolo paese della Liguria. Cosimo, per sfuggire ad un punizione, decide di salire su un albero e non scenderne mai più: si costruisce un mondo aereo dove diversi personaggi della cultura e della politica (Napoleone compreso) lo vanno a trovare, testimoniandogli la loro ammirazione. Vive anche una tormentata storia d'amore con la volubile Viola. Cosimo muore vecchio, senza mai discendere in terra: ammalato, in punto di morte, si aggrappa alla fune di una mongolfiera e scompare mentre attraversa, così appeso, il mare.
Chosen as one of the New York Times's ten best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists. Introduction by the Author illustrations. Translated by George Martin. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.
Recounts the chivalrous exploits of an empty suit of armor and the separate halves of a nobleman who has been bisected by a cannon ball.
Three tales, each dominated by one of three senses, present a married couple touring Mexico, a tyrant made prisoner of contradictory messages, and a fashionable Parisian and a drugged rock musician impassioned by scents.
For the first time in paperback--a volume of thirty-seven diabolically inventive stories, fables, and "impossible interviews" from one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, displaying the full breadth of his vision and wit. Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition.From the Trade Paperback edition.
It's a powerful combination of the world's best literature and superior reading and skills instruction. "Prentice Hall Literature Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes" helps students grasp the power and beauty that lies within the written word, while the program's research-based reading approach ensures that no child is left behind.
Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here--spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism--are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.Following the title essay, which explores fourteen definitions of "the classic," Calvino offers writings that are at once critical appraisals and personal appreciations of, among others: Homer, Xenophon, Ovid, Pliny, Nezami, Ariosto, Cardano, Galileo, Defoe, Voltaire, Diderot, Ortes, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Twain, Henry James, Stevenson, Conrad, Pasternak, Gadda, Montale, Hemingway, Ponge, Borges, and Queneau.At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of "literary greatness" have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, Why Read the Classics? gives us an inspiriting corrective.From the Hardcover edition.
[Adventure of the Speckled Band](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL262561W) / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The little mystery / E.C. Bentley
The adventure of the Egyptian tomb / Agatha Christie
Emil and the detectives (an extract) / Erich Kästner
The inspiration of Mr. Budd / Dorothy L. Sayers
From the files of Inspector Craig / Raymond Smullyan
Butch minds the baby / Damon Runyon
Murder at St. Oswald's / Michael Underwood
The cross of Lorraine / Isaac Asimov
The Newdick helicopter / Leslie Charteris
Cold money / Ellery Queen
More from the files of Inspector Craig / Raymond Smullyan
The one-handed murderer / Italo Calvino (an Italian folktale)
Fingerprinting a ghost / Tony Fletcher (from Memories of murder)
It's a hard world / Andrew Vachss
Maddened by mystery / Stephen Leacock
LILLIAN
CATS' PARADISE
TOM QUARTZ
MING'S BIGGEST PREY
THE CHESHIRE CAT
THE GARDEN OF STUBBORN CATS
THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
RHUBARB
THE CYPRIAN CAT
A CAT, A MAN, AND TWO WOMEN
PUSS-IN-BOOTS
MEHITABEL AND HER KITTENS
CALVIN: A STUDY OF CHARACTER
THE IMMORTAL CAT
TOBERMORY
GEORGE ELIOT: A MEDICAL STUDY
[Black Cat](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL41068W)
THE BLACK AND WHITE DYNASTIES
PIAZZA VITTORIO
AN INCIDENT
A BLACK AFFAIR
SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT
1 AM A CAT
THE CAT THAT WENT TO TRINITY
THE AFFLICTIONS OF AN ENGLISH CAT
QUIXOTE AND THE CATS
MIDSHIPMAN, THE CAT
TOTAL LOSS
THE CAT
THE STORY OF WEBSTER
*I nostri antenati* (1952/1959) è una trilogia fantastica ed allegorica sull'uomo contemporaneo, costituita dai romanzi *Il visconte dimezzato* (1952), *Il barone rampante* (1957) e *Il cavaliere inesistente* (1959), di Italo Calvino, che prese a modello *l'Orlando furioso* di Ludovico Ariosto. L'autore stesso suggerì di considerare collegati i tre romanzi, quando già tali romanzi erano stati pubblicati e affermati presso critica e pubblico, e difatti ne dispose un'edizione (per la prima volta presso Einaudi nel 1960) con i tre romanzi legati.
Paperback edition of a German translation first published in 1985 by Carl Hanser Verlag
