11 Books by Italo Calvino
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Overview: Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923. He grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985.
Genre: General Fiction/Classics
Italian Folktales (1956) A popular collection of Italian fairy tales for the general reader. 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.
Adam, One Afternoon and Other Stories (1957) This collection of playful, deadly fables is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story "The Argentine Ant" moved Gore Vidal to declare ‘if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better’.
Our Ancestors Trilogy (1960) 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.
Marcovaldo: or the Seasons in the City (1963) Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams-but the results are never the expected ones.
Cosmicomics (1965) 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?” (This edition, 2009: The Complete Cosmicomics, which collects almost all of the Cosmicomic stories and is not currently available in the United States.)
t zero (also published as Time and the Hunter) (1967) A collection of stories about time, space, and the evolution of the universe in which the author blends mathematics with poetic imagination. “Calvino does what very few writers can do: he describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty” (Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books).
The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1969) The narrative details a meeting among travelers who are inexplicably unable to speak after traveling through a forest. The characters in the novel recount their tales via Tarot cards, which are reconstructed by the narrator. The novel is in two parts, each using a different style Tarot deck.
Invisible Cities (1972) Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal).
Mr. Palomar (1983) Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman’s breasts, or a gorilla’s behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
Under the Jaguar Sun (1986) Three senses-taste, hearing, and smell-dominate the lives of the characters in these witty, fantastical stories. But the senses, promising the fulfillment of desire and an exit from the self, only lead back to their source: the savoring palate, the listening ear, the smelling nose. “A sumptuous small gem of a book” (Publishers Weekly).
Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (1993) For the first time – 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.
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