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Italo Calvino (1923–1985)

Author of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

315+ Works 60,738 Members 985 Reviews 465 Favorited
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About the Author

Italo Calvino 1923-1984 Novelist and short story writer Italo Calvino was born in Cuba on October 15, 1923, and grew up in Italy, graduating from the University of Turin in 1947. He is remembered for his distinctive style of fables. Much of his first work was political, including Il Sentiero dei show more Nidi di Ragno (The Path of the Nest Spiders, 1947), considered one of the main novels of neorealism. In the 1950s, Calvino began to explore fantasy and myth as extensions of realism. Il Visconte Dimezzato (The Cloven Knight, 1952), concerns a knight split in two in combat who continues to live on as two separates, one good and one bad, deprived of the link which made them a moral whole. In Il Barone Rampante (Baron in the Trees, 1957), a boy takes to the trees to avoid eating snail soup and lives an entire, fulfilled life without ever coming back down. Calvino was awarded an honorary degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1984 and died in 1985, following a cerebral hemorrhage. At the time of his death, he was the most translated contemporary Italian writer and a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Jerry Bauer

Series

Works by Italo Calvino

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979) 12,442 copies
Invisible Cities (1972) 9,325 copies
The Baron in the Trees (1957) 4,590 copies
Cosmicomics (1965) 3,176 copies
Italian Folktales (1956) 2,339 copies
The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1969) 2,082 copies
Mr. Palomar (1983) 1,971 copies
Difficult Loves (1958) 1,749 copies
The Path to the Spiders' Nests (1947) 1,674 copies
Why Read the Classics? (1991) 1,564 copies
The Cloven Viscount (1952) 1,390 copies
The Nonexistent Knight (1959) 1,378 copies
The Complete Cosmicomics (1997) 1,050 copies
Our Ancestors (1960) 1,013 copies
t zero (1967) 917 copies
The Uses of Literature (1980) 905 copies
Under the Jaguar Sun (1986) 807 copies
The Road to San Giovanni (1990) 483 copies
Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday (1983) — Editor — 431 copies
Adam, One Afternoon (1952) 281 copies
Collection of Sand (1984) 265 copies
La giornata d'uno scrutatore (1963) 259 copies
Last Comes the Raven (1949) 232 copies
Into the War (1954) 215 copies
Ten Italian Folktales (1995) 156 copies
A Plunge into Real Estate (1957) 145 copies
Romanzi e racconti volume 1 (1991) 138 copies
The Distance of the Moon (2018) 118 copies
Romanzi e racconti volume 2 (1991) 92 copies
I Racconti (1958) 92 copies
Fiabe italiane, volume 1 (1971) 83 copies
Romanzi e racconti volume 3 (1994) 64 copies
The Queen's Necklace (2011) 47 copies
Fantastic Tales {Vol. 1} (1987) 45 copies
Sulla fiaba (1988) 45 copies
Fantastic Tales {Vol. 2} (1983) 44 copies
Aventures (1964) 44 copies
Piccola cosmogonia portatile (1950) — Author — 42 copies
Fiabe italiane, volume 2 (1956) 40 copies
I libri degli altri (1991) 34 copies
Fiabe italiane, volume 3 (1986) 30 copies
Tämä vaikea elämä (1979) 21 copies
I racconti volume 1 (1993) 17 copies
La foresta-radice-labirinto (2000) 15 copies
La nube de smog (1901) 15 copies
I racconti volume 2 (1993) 12 copies
Der verzauberte Garten (1998) 12 copies
Romanzi e racconti (1994) 12 copies
The Argentine Ant (2005) 11 copies
L'avventura di un lettore (1986) 10 copies
Novelle del novecento: an anthology (1966) — Contributor — 10 copies
I disegni arrabbiati (2012) 9 copies
Una pietra sopra (1980) 8 copies
Romarine (1994) 7 copies
A Sign In Space 6 copies
Vittorini 5 copies
Fiabe tutte da ridere (2013) 5 copies
Fiabe di mare (2013) 5 copies
Jeżeli t = 0 (2021) 5 copies
The Spiral 4 copies
Basnie wloskie Tom 1 (2013) 4 copies
Il libro dei risvolti (2023) 4 copies
La vera storia 3 copies
Üç deneme (1993) 3 copies
Yeni Bir Sayfa (2017) 3 copies
Tourner la page (2021) 2 copies
Sifir Zaman (2015) 2 copies
All in a Day 2 copies
Mbi përrallën 2 copies
Fiabe per le bambine (2015) 2 copies
L’últim és el corb (2023) 2 copies
Varför läsa klassikerna (2011) 2 copies
Liguria 1 copy
Gözlemci (2015) 1 copy
Dere Tepe Ters (2013) 1 copy
Agaca Tüneyen Baron (2015) 1 copy
Italia — Contributor — 1 copy
Les jeunes du Pô (2023) 1 copy
Palomars (2022) 1 copy
Das schwarze Schaf (2017) 1 copy
Fiabe a cavallo (2016) 1 copy
Azicik Acikli Masallar (2016) 1 copy
Nesnadné idyly (2018) 1 copy
Nesnadné vzpomínky (2018) 1 copy

Associated Works

Candide (1759) — Introduction, some editions — 20,445 copies
Pinocchio (1883) — Afterword, some editions — 8,170 copies
Orlando Furioso (1516) — Introduction, some editions — 1,365 copies
That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (1957) — Introduction, some editions — 1,188 copies
The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (1983) — Contributor — 1,130 copies
Pierre et Jean (French Edition) (1887) — Introduction, some editions — 1,046 copies
The Classic Fairy Tales [Norton Critical Edition] (1998) — Contributor — 1,001 copies
The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989) — Contributor — 889 copies
Codex Seraphinianus (1981) — Introduction, some editions — 791 copies
The Blue Flowers (1965) — Translator, some editions — 760 copies
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink (2007) — Contributor — 535 copies
Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature (1983) — Contributor — 499 copies
Other People's Trades (1985) — Introduction, some editions — 450 copies
Il Pentamerone: The Tale of Tales (1970) — Foreword, some editions — 429 copies
The New Media Reader (2003) — Contributor — 297 copies
Detective Stories (1998) — Contributor — 268 copies
Voices in the Evening (1961) — Introduction, some editions — 234 copies
Short Stories in Italian/Racconti in Italiano (1999) — Contributor — 216 copies
Sudden Fiction International: Sixty Short-Short Stories (1989) — Contributor — 213 copies
Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels (1979) — Preface, some editions — 191 copies
Italian Short Stories 1 (1965) — Contributor — 168 copies
Granta 46: Crime (1994) — Contributor — 151 copies
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (2019) — Contributor — 135 copies
African Folktales (1955) — Foreword, some editions — 128 copies
The Theory of the Four Movements (1808) — Editor, some editions — 119 copies
Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology (1984) — Contributor — 111 copies
Ferragus (1833) — Foreword, some editions — 108 copies
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (2020) — Contributor — 108 copies
Cat Stories (Everyman's Pocket Classics) (2011) — Contributor — 97 copies
Lo stadio di Wimbledon (1983) — Preface, some editions — 92 copies
Granta 16: Science (1985) — Contributor — 82 copies
Strangeness (1977) — Contributor — 52 copies
The Road to Science Fiction #6: Around The World (1998) — Contributor — 46 copies
La letteratura americana e altri saggi (1951) — Foreword, some editions — 45 copies
Partisan Diary: A Woman's Life in the Italian Resistance (1956) — Note, some editions — 42 copies
Antaeus No. 75/76, Autumn 1994 - The Final Issue (1994) — Contributor — 32 copies
Six Modern Italian Novellas (1964) — Contributor — 25 copies
One World of Literature (1992) — Contributor — 24 copies
To Those Gods Beyond (1972) — Foreword, some editions — 23 copies
Tomorrow and Tomorrow : Ten Tales of the Future (1973) — Contributor — 23 copies
Chills and Thrills: Tales of Terror and Enchantment (2001) — Contributor — 22 copies
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (1969) — Contributor — 21 copies
To Those Gods Beyond (2019) — Author, some editions — 15 copies
Relatos italianos del Siglo XX (1974) — Contributor — 13 copies
Fiabe (1950) — Editor — 11 copies
The Breast: An Anthology (1995) — Contributor — 7 copies
Modern Italian Short Stories (1954) — Contributor — 6 copies
Le parità e le storie morali dei nostri villani (1995) — Foreword, some editions — 5 copies
Italien erzählt : elf Erzählungen — Author — 5 copies
Das Frühlingslesebuch (1987) — Contributor — 5 copies
Cuentos de verano (1997) — Author, some editions — 4 copies
Great fairytales, part 6, Justice and punishment (2009) — Contributor — 2 copies
Månen : fra den indre verden til det ydre rum (2018) — Author, some editions — 1 copy
Dans le creux du songe (2014) — Contributor — 1 copy

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Common Knowledge

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LE: Invisible Cities in Folio Society Devotees (October 2023)
Book about you reading the Book in Name that Book (June 2013)

Reviews

The first chapter is a giddy delight, and there are some real high points, in terms of thinking about reading, what reading is for, why we read--but mostly it's a slow slide downhill. The fundamental problem is that Italo Calvino is very clever and pretty good at writing, but he doesn't actually know that women and people of color are people. He has an extremely clear idea of the Universal Person, who is always male and implicitly white, and this becomes more and more frustrating as the book goes on. Also the last few "novel excerpts" were unbearably horny, in a predictable and gross cishet dude fashion.
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localgayangel | 255 other reviews | Mar 5, 2024 |
I reread the book as a novel way to communicate scientific ideas. In reality the book does something different, it transposes the scientific abstraction into the every day and makes for funny paradoxes, absurd relationships between abstracted beings. The fiction is still very much high-culture and actually doesn’t really clarify any of the science but makes for a different kind of fiction.

Sometimes the overall effect is original, fun and rich. Other times the effect is stilted, distant, a bit off putting. In any case a unique experiment in fiction.… (more)
 
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yates9 | 47 other reviews | Feb 28, 2024 |
A modern Jekyll/Hyde fable about the good and evil within everyone but that has surprises on the theme, and is amusingly told. The Viscount goes off to the Crusades and, not having a clue what he's doing, promptly jumps in front of a cannon and gets his body split vertically in half. One side is found and restored to life, returns home, and proceeds to rule over his subjects cruelly and selfishly. A while later the other half of the Viscount also returns home, having been found under a pile of corpses and likewise restored to life; but this half is the Viscount's good half, performing good deeds and acting utterly selflessly in all circumstances.

As predictably intolerable as the bad half of the Viscount is, his good half is perhaps surprisingly found less than tolerable itself. For instance, farmers don't appreciate being told they should sell their crops for a smaller price because there's a famine and people are starving. Others don't appreciate their personal moral conduct being called into question. "Lucky that cannonball only split him in two. If it had done it in three, who knows what we'd have to put up with!", say the Viscount's put upon subjects. Turns out that goodness without a healthy dose of self-interest to temper it is difficult to accept, as a little reflection will prove the point of.

Also brought into the spotlight is the average person's accommodation of the world's evil, as everyone of course accommodates to some degree (what, you donate every cent you don't need for food and shelter to the poor? No?). This is done through the character of the Viscount's carpenter, Pietrochiodo, who takes pride in his work and is paid well, but the bad Viscount keeps having him create torture and execution devices. "Just forget the purpose for which they're used, and look at them as pieces of mechanism. You see how fine they are?", he says. He justifies himself: "he was beginning to doubt whether building good machines was not beyond human possibility when the only mechanism which could function really practically and exactly seemed to be gibbets and racks." His conscience does bother him sometimes: "Can it be in my soul, this evil which makes only my cruel machines work?" Nevertheless, "he went on inventing other tortures with great zeal and ability."

There are plenty of funny moments in the story. The bad Viscount decides to marry a peasant lass, and, only having badness in him, comes up with a unique way to approach her parents: "That night the haystack where the mother slept caught fire and the barrel where the father slept came apart. In the morning the two old folk were staring at the remains when the Viscount appeared. 'I must apologize for alarming you last night,' said he, 'but I didn't quite know how to approach the subject.'"

In the end, the two halves of the Viscount fight a Monty Python-esque duel, exactly reopen each other's vertical scars, and the doctor stitches them back together, restoring wholeness. Having experienced both halves of what humanity is capable of, unrestrained, he ruled wisely, but limitedly: "Some might expect that with the Viscount entire again a period of marvelous happiness would open; but obviously a whole Viscount is not enough to make all the world whole."
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lelandleslie | 24 other reviews | Feb 24, 2024 |
You can read this story by the Italian fabulist Calvino on two different levels. Ostensibly a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which the adventurer describes 55 cities he has visited in the empire to the emperor, you can try to focus on the unique physical aspect of each city as described. This is interesting and has led to many different artists creating visual interpretations of the cities as described in the book. But that's not really what the book is about.

Each description of a city, 1-3 pages long each, takes one facet of the human experience and makes it the defining feature of that city. In Chloe, everyone is a stranger, no one ever greets anyone with recognition, and at each encounter with another person, one imagines a thousand different possibilities unfolding before quickly looking away. Perenthia was laid out in design to reflect the perfection of the firmament, to create heaven and utopia on earth, but gives birth to monsters. Octavia is suspended from a net stretched across a void between two huge mountains, buildings held up by being tied to the net above; life is less uncertain in Octavia, as inhabitants know the net will last only so long. Valdrada was built above a reflective lake, so that nothing that happens in the above ground Valdrada does not also happen in the Valdrada of the lake, and the inhabitants are so aware of their copied image that they take no action without taking special care of how that copied image will look (this book was published in 1972, well before Instagram!).

Halfway through the book, Polo tells Kublai Khan that in describing each city he is really describing his home city of Venice, describing some aspect of that city. But he is also describing some aspect of humanity in each description of a city. As Kublai Khan tells him in one of the dialogues that are placed between descriptions of cities, "I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again." Polo replies, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name."

Humanity, in other words, is more similar than the differences suggested by maps and human constructions. More durable as well. Travelogues are interesting but what they tend to describe is not lasting. "Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing."

It's a hopeful vision.
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lelandleslie | 204 other reviews | Feb 24, 2024 |

Lists

1940s (1)
1970s (2)
My TBR (4)
Cooper (1)
1950s (2)
Reiny (2)

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Associated Authors

Pier Paolo Pasolini Afterword, Contributor
Cesare Pavese Afterword, Contributor
Alberto Moravia Contributor
Giorgio Bassani Contributor
Nino Palumbo Contributor
Dino Buzzati Contributor
Giuseppe Cassieri Contributor
Natalia Ginzburg Contributor
Carlo Cassola Contributor
Mario Soldati Contributor
Giuseppe Dessi Contributor
Elio Vittorini Translator
Vitaliano Brancati Contributor
Luigi Davi Contributor
Luigi Santucci Contributor
Italo Svevo Contributor
Leonardo Sciascia Contributor
Burkhart Kroeber Translator
Heinz Riedt Translator
Edgar Allan Poe Contributor
Sir Walter Scott Contributor
Ambrose Bierce Contributor
Honoré de Balzac Contributor
Rudyard Kipling Contributor
Théophile Gautier Contributor
H. G. Wells Contributor
Jan Potocki Contributor
Philarète Chasles Contributor
Guy de Maupassant Contributor
Jean Lorrain Contributor
E. T. A. Hoffmann Contributor
Vernon Lee Contributor
Henry James Contributor
Prosper Mérimée Contributor
Gérard de Nerval Contributor
Charles Dickens Contributor
Harry Mathews Translator
Alastair Brotchie Introduction
Iain White Translator
Julia M. Kirchner Übersetzer, Translator
Nino Erné Übersetzer, Translator
Helene Moser Translator
William Weaver Translator
Henny Vlot Translator
Jorma Kapari Translator
Luca Baranelli Contributor, Editor
Shelton Walsmith Cover artist
脇 功 Translator, 翻訳
Esther Benítez Translator
Martin McLaughlin Translator, Introduction
Peter Washington Introduction
Viveca Melander Translator
Steven Cooley Cover designer
Michael Salu Cover designer
Giovanni Raboni Afterword
Bascove Cover artist
Liisa Ryömä Translator
Moro Silo Narrator
Jeanette Winterson Introduction
Elīna Brasliņa Illustrator
Dave McKean Illustrator
Kees Nieuwenhuyzen Cover designer
John Lee Narrator
Dace Meiere Translator
Tim Parks Translator
Mario Barenghi Editor, Afterword
Patrick Creagh Translator
Karin Alin Translator
Nilson Moulin Translator
Edgar Valter Illustrator
Eugenio Montale Contributor
Xavier Lloveras Translator
Louise Fili Cover designer
George Martin Translator
Gérard Dubois Illustrator
Anton Beeke Cover designer
須賀 敦子 Translator
Gustav Sjöberg Translator
Helinä Kangas Translator
Burkhart Kröber Übersetzer
Renate Belina Cover artist
Jean Thibaudeau Translator
Kees Nieuwenhuijzen Cover designer
Jeff Cottenden Photographer
Peggy Wright Translator
Semin Sayıt Translator
Johannes Grützke Illustrator
Guido Piovene Contributor
Sergio Solmi Translator
米川 良夫 Translator
Linda Pennings Translator
山崎 佳代子 Translator
Pau Vidal Translator
Carlos Manzano Translator
Patty Krone Translator
和田 忠彦 Translator
Yond Boeke Translator
Ildefonso Grande Translator

Statistics

Works
315
Also by
69
Members
60,738
Popularity
#238
Rating
3.9
Reviews
985
ISBNs
1,564
Languages
36
Favorited
465

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