Italo Calvino

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

Invisible Cities

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver Italo Calvino's masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book's central character. Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book--IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER, by Italo Calvino, of course--are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another--an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Cosimo di Rondó, 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 by and a new century dawn.

The Baron in the Trees

Twelve stories by the brilliant Italian author employ the history of science and the poetic imagination to ring changes on the theme and activity of creation

Cosmicomics

Ambientato nel periodo più veemente della Resistenza, nel piccolo paese ligure di Riviera di Ponente, valli e boschi dove la lotta partigiana è più forte, Pin, un bambino di circa dieci anni, orfano di entrambi i genitori, tremendamente solo e in perenne ricerca di integrarsi con gli adulti del vicolo e dell'osteria. Offeso per le relazioni sessuali che la sorella prostituta intrattiene con i militari tedeschi e provocato dagli adulti a provare la sua fedeltà, Pin sottrae all'amante della donna la pistola di servizio, una Walther P38, e la sotterra in campagna, nel luogo, sconosciuto a tutti, in cui è solito rifugiarsi, dove i ragni fanno il nido. Il furto sarà poi causa del suo internamento in prigione. Qui entra a contatto con la durezza della vita di carcerato e con la violenza perpetrata da uomini su altri uomini.

Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno

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

Difficult Loves

SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM is the text to a series of lectures which became an obsession for Italo Calvino in the last year of his life. Drawing on the works of Lucretius, Ovid, Boccaccio, Falubert, Kundera, Perec and many more, he pinpoints the universal laws and indispensable literary values future generations might cherish -lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity. It is an eloquent and lively 'defence' of literature - a fitting gift for the next millennium.

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

When the moon was closer to the earth, he would - once a month, when its orbit made it possible - climb a ladder to its scaly surface. He remembers life on the nebulae when matter first began to exist, causing great confusion and destroying his grandmother's pillow. As a child, he used the curve of space to play marbles with brand-new atoms. With the rest of his family, he evolved to walk on land - only his great-uncle stubbornly remained a fish. And when the rest of the Dinosaurs died he was surprised to be greeted with gracious kindness instead of mortal fear by the new inhabitants of the Earth. This is the life of Qfwfq, the unique narrator of Italo Calvino's comic stories of the strangeness of the universe. They are extremely funny, imaginative beyond the scope of the galactic distances they conjure, beautifully written and absolutely unforgettable. This new collection is the first complete edition in English and includes seven stories never before translated.

The Complete Cosmicomics

Città reali scomposte e trasformate in chiave onirica, e città simboliche e surreali che diventano archetipi moderni in un testo narrativo che raggiunge i vertici della poeticità.

Le città invisibili

Il Barone Rampante

Il cavaliere inesistente

Marcovaldo is an enchanting collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. Calvino charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disasters with a surrealistic view of city life through the eyes of an outsider. As always with Calvino, nothing is quite as it seems.

Marcovaldo

In a collection of thirty-six wise, elegantly written essays, the late author of The Road to San Giovanni explores the the enduring significance of key authors and fine literature from the Western canon, discussing the works of Homer, Defoe, Galileo, Stendhal, Dickens, Hemingway, and many others. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Why Read the Classics?

Italian Folktales

Il Visconte Dimezzato (Oscar Mondadori)

Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomicshort stories.

The Distance of the Moon

Il visconte dimezzato

"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

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Mr.Palomar

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

Italo Calvino

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