<div>A novel of a delightful eccentric on a search for truth, by the renowned author of Invisible Cities. In The New York Times Book Review, the poet Seamus Heaney praised Mr. Palomar as a series of &ldquo;beautiful, nimble, solitary feats of imagination.&rdquo; Throughout these twenty-seven intricately structured chapters, the musings of the crusty Mr. Palomar consistently render the world sublime and ridiculous. Like the telescope for which he is named, Mr. Palomar is a natural observer. &ldquo;It is only after you have come to know the surface of things,&rdquo; he believes, &ldquo;that you can venture to seek what is underneath.&rdquo; Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, or a topless sunbather, he tends to let his meditations stray from the present moment to the great beyond. And though he may fail as an objective spectator, he is the best of company. &ldquo;Each brief chapter reads like an exploded haiku,&rdquo; wrote Time Out. A play on a world fragmented by our individual perceptions, this inventive and irresistible novel encapsulates the life&rsquo;s work of an artist of the highest order, &ldquo;the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century&rdquo; (The Guardian).</div>

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Mr. Palomar

<div>A charming portrait of one man&rsquo;s dreams and schemes, by &ldquo;the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century&rdquo; (The Guardian). In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and &rsquo;60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life. Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing for the unspoiled rural world of his imagination. Much to the continuing puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams and gives rein to his fantasies, whether it&rsquo;s sleeping in the great outdoors on a park bench, following a stray cat, or trying to catch wasps. Unfortunately, the results are never quite what he anticipates. Spanning from the 1950s to the 1960s, the twenty stories in Marcovaldo are alternately comic and melancholy, farce and fantasy. Throughout, Calvino&rsquo;s unassuming masterpiece &ldquo;conveys the sensuous, tangible qualities of life&rdquo; (The New York Times).</div>

Marcovaldo

<div>One of the New York Times&rsquo;s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are &ldquo;a treasure&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times). Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres&mdash;as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals&mdash;these two hundred tales bring to life Italy&rsquo;s folklore, sometimes with earthy humor, sometimes with noble mystery, and sometimes with the playfulness of sheer nonsense. Selected and retold by one of the country&rsquo;s greatest literary icons, &ldquo;this collection stands with the finest folktale collections anywhere&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). &ldquo;For readers of any age . . . A masterwork.&rdquo; &mdash;The Wall Street Journal &ldquo;A magic book, and a classic to boot.&rdquo; &mdash;Time </div>

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Italian Folktales

<div>This collection of essays by the acclaimed author of Cosmicomics offers a fascinating, personal journey through some of literature&rsquo;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&rsquo;s Metamorphoses and Alain Robbe-Grillet&rsquo;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&rsquo;s works are like artichokes, Calvino offers a new perspective on beloved favorites and introduces us to hidden gems. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&mdash;San Francisco Chronicle</div>

Why Read the Classics?

<div>The celebrated author of Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities shares his &ldquo;brilliant, original approach to literature&rdquo; in these late-career lectures (San Francisco Chronicle). At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on his Charles Eliot Norton poetry lectures to be delivered the following year at Harvard University. The six planned lectures would define the qualities he most valued in writing, and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Six Memos for the Next Millennium collects the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature, but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one &ldquo;memo&rdquo; each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity, drawing examples from his vast knowledge of myth, folklore, and works both ancient and modern. Written in the mid-1980s, these lectures have proven to be astonishingly prescient as we have entered Calvino&rsquo;s &ldquo;next millennium&rdquo;. &ldquo;One of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature.&rdquo;&mdash;Boston Globe &ldquo;A key to Calvino&rsquo;s own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world&rsquo;s greatest writing.&rdquo;&mdash;San Francisco Chronicle</div>

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

<div>When a nobleman is split in two, his separate halves pursue different adventures in a fantastically macabre tale by the author of Invisible Cities. It is the seventeenth century, and the Viscount Medardo of Terralba must go into battle against the Turks. But the inexperienced warrior is soon bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. Through a miracle of stitching, one half of him survives, returning to his feudal estate to lead a lavishly evil life. But soon his other, virtuous half appears&mdash;also very much alive. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there&rsquo;s no telling the lengths each will go to in order to win. Now available in an independent volume for the first time, this deliciously bizarre novella of is Calvino at his most devious and winning.</div>

The Cloven Viscount

<div>The author of Invisible Cities explores love and war &ldquo;with enormous realist dignity&rdquo; in this collection of &ldquo;wondrous work from [his] early career&rdquo; (Kirkus, starred review). In this short story collection, one of Italy&rsquo;s greatest storytellers explores the interior lives of characters just as their most cherished illusions of love are suddenly swept away. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady&rsquo;s bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Confronted with a jarring moment of recognition, each of these characters discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. This is the first edition in English to present these fifteen short stories together as Calvino originally envisioned them. It also includes two stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein.</div>

Difficult Loves

<div>An empty suit of armor is the hero of this witty novella set in the Early Middle Ages by the acclaimed author of If on a Winter&rsquo;s Night a Traveler. As a paladin in the court of Charlemagne, Agilulf is the very embodiment of valor and dedication to duty&mdash;but he is also a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. While he has stolen the heart of the female knight Bradamante, she in turn is loved by the young adventurer Rambaldo. When a challenge to Agilulf&rsquo;s honor sends him on an expedition through France, England, and North Africa, Brandamante and Ramaldo follow close behind. Narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, this beloved novella explores the absurdities of medieval knighthood in a series of plot twists that are &ldquo;executed with brilliance and brio&rdquo; (Chicago Tribune).</div>

The Nonexistent Knight

<div>The acclaimed author presents &ldquo;a rich and wide-ranging anthology&rdquo; of 19th century fantasy and horror stories&mdash;with an original introduction for each (Library Journal). Vampires, ghosts, and other horrors abound in this collection of nineteenth-century fantastic literature, selected and edited by Italo Calvino, a twentieth-century master of the speculative. As Calvino explains in his introduction to this collection, &ldquo;the true theme of the nineteenth-century fantastic tale is the reality of what we see: to believe or not to believe in phantasmagoric apparitions, to glimpse another world, enchanted or infernal, behind everyday appearances.&rdquo; This anthology of twenty-six enchanting, uncanny, terrifying, and immortally entertaining short stories includes E.T.A. Hoffmann&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Sandman,&rdquo; Nikolai Gogol&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Nose,&rdquo; Edgar Allan Poe&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Tell-Tale Heart,&rdquo; Robert Louis Stevenson&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Bottle Imp,&rdquo; and many more, each with a introduction by Calvino. &ldquo;Impressive and utterly pleasing&hellip;Each story [Calvino] picks is absorbing, unique, and continually surprising.&rdquo;&mdash;Los Angeles Times</div>

Fantastic Tales

<div>The complete collection of &ldquo;nimble and often hilarious&rdquo; short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino&rsquo;s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of a &ldquo;cosmic know-it-all&rdquo; with the unpronounceable name of Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Relating complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world, they are an indelible and delightful literary achievement. Originally published in Italian in three separate volumes&mdash;including the Asti d&rsquo;Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics&mdash;these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. &ldquo;Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There&rsquo;s no way I&mdash;or anyone, really&mdash;can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.&rdquo; &mdash;Colin Dwyer, NPR</div>

The Complete Cosmicomics

<div>This &ldquo;brilliant collection of essays&rdquo; and travelogues by the celebrated author of Invisible Cities &ldquo;may change the way you see the world around you&rdquo; (The Guardian, UK). Italo Calvino&rsquo;s boundless curiosity and ingenious imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, his last collection of new works published during his lifetime. Delving into the delights of the visual world&mdash;both in art and travel&mdash;the subjects of these 38 essays range from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. In Calvino&rsquo;s words, this collection is &ldquo;a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods&hellip;The fascination of a collection lies just as much in what it reveals as in what it conceals of the secret urge that led to its creation&rdquo; (from Collection of Sand). Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, &ldquo;beautifully translated by Martin McLaughlin&rdquo; (The Guardian, UK).</div>

Collection of Sand

<div>This collection of journals, interviews and travelogues by the author of Invisible Cities has “something fascinating on every page” (The Guardian, UK). This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era’s most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II. He traces the course of his literary career and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960 that brings out his droll wit at its best. Sparkling with wisdom and unexpected delights, Hermit in Paris is an autobiography like no other. “Surprising, tart, and distinctive, like [Calvino] himself.” —Philadelphia Inquirer</div>

Hermit in Paris

<div>This collection of three long stories by the author of Cosmicomics “demonstrates clearly his talent for transforming the mundane into the marvelous” (The New York Times). Italo Calvino is widely recognized as one of postwar Italy’s greatest fiction writers and one of the twentieth century’s greatest fabulists. This collection of three stories showcases his range and virtuosity. In the title story, an Italian Communist poll watcher is stationed at a hospital in Turin, where nuns guide the hands of invalids to their preferred candidate in a special election. In “Smog,” a city’s cooperative laundry facility reveals a harbinger of social purification. And in “The Argentine Ant,” the citizens of a provincial seaside town struggle against a government-controlled infestation. “Like Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino dreams perfect dreams for us.” —John Updike, New Yorker</div>

The Watcher and Other Stories

<div>From the acclaimed, genre-bending Italian fabulist author, a posthumous collection of career-spanning stories previously unavailable in English. &ldquo;Everybody telephones everybody at every possible moment, and nobody can speak to anybody . . . Distance has been the warp that supports the weft of every love story.&rdquo; &mdash;from Numbers in the Dark Written between 1943 and 1984, the stories in Numbers in the Dark span the career of one of fiction&rsquo;s modern masters: from Italo Calvino&rsquo;s earliest fables, to tales informed by life in World War II&ndash;era Italy, to the delightful experimentation that would define his later work. Here are speculative stories on life in the digital age, genre-bending wonders, and &ldquo;impossible interviews&rdquo; with the likes of Montezuma and a Neanderthal. Deftly translated by Tim Parks, Numbers in the Dark shows off Calvino&rsquo;s lifelong gift for subtle humor and shimmering philosophical insight. Praise for Numbers in the Dark &ldquo;Numbers in the Dark is a glorious grab-bag . . . [with] enough gems from every phase in Calvino&rsquo;s career to make it feel indispensable.&rdquo; &mdash;Seattle Times &ldquo;These stories reward the patient reader with wisdom, humor, and insight.&rdquo; &mdash;Library Journal &ldquo;Calvino . . . is well-represented in this continually surprising collection . . . . Novelist Parks&#39;s superb translations capture Calvino&rsquo;s quirky, iconoclastic voice, helping to make this a worthy addition to the Calvino shelf.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Numbers in the Dark

<div>From the Italian author, personal essays featuring his relationship with his father, his love of movies, and fighting fascism during World War II. &ldquo;In each other&rsquo;s presence we became mute, would walk in silence side by side along the road to San Giovanni. To my father&rsquo;s mind, words must serve as confirmations of things, and as signs of possession; to mine, they were foretastes of things barely glimpsed, not possessed, presumed.&rdquo; &mdash;from The Road to San Giovanni In these autobiographical essays, published after Italo Calvino&rsquo;s death, the intellectually vibrant writer not only reflects on his own past but also inquires into the very workings of memory itself. From the title essay&rsquo;s lyrical evocation of the author&rsquo;s relationship with his father, and a charming account of teenage years spent in the glow of the cinema screen, to Calvino&rsquo;s reminiscences of his experiences in the Italian Resistance during World War II and of his years in Paris, to his declaration of purpose as a writer in the final essay&rsquo;s visionary fragments, these five &ldquo;memory exercises&rdquo; are heartfelt, affecting, and wise. Praise for The Road to San Giovanni &ldquo;Brimming with Calvino&rsquo;s beautifully crafted prose, dry humor, and continual questioning . . . Calvino has been very well served by his translator, Tim Parks.&rdquo; &mdash;Observer &ldquo;In five elegant &ldquo;memory exercises&rdquo; written between 1962 and 1977, Italian fiction writer Calvino (1923-85) presents an affecting self-portrait and offers indirect insights into how he conjured up his imaginary worlds . . . . This sparkling translation concludes with Calvino&#39;s lyric, metaphorical, highly elliptical description of his creative process.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Italo Calvino
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Books By Italo Calvino (15 Books)