Italo Calvino

This witty novella, a picaresque gem brilliantly parodies medieval knighthood. Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it....

Chosen as one of the New York Times's 10 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....

A volume of 37 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....

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 stories....

Intricate interior lives are brilliantly explored in these short stories, now presented in one definitive collection as Calvino intended them....

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer....

"Che cos'è oggi la città per noi? Penso d'aver scritto qualcosa come un ultimo poema d'amore alle città, nel momento in cui diventa sempre più difficile viverle come città."(Da una conferenza di Calvino tenuta a New York nel 1983)

Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection - one of Calvino’s earliest - take place in a World War II era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller....

At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come....

Italo Calvino's beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant....

Un viaggiatore, una piccola stazione, una valigia da consegnare a una misteriosa persona... Da questa premessa si possono snodare innumerevoli vicende, ma sono dieci quelle che l'autore propone in questo sorprendente e godibilissimo romanzo. "È un romanzo sul piacere di leggere romanzi...

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....

Il narratore ripercorre la lunga vicenda del fratello, Cosimo di Rondò, vissuto nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo a Ombrosa, in Liguria...

In five autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance....

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense....

Personaggio buffo e melanconico, Marcovaldo è il protagonista d'una serie di favole moderne, dove Italo Calvino va segnando avvenimenti...

Dramatisations of Calvino's most famous works, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook, plus bonus programmes. Italo Calvino was one of the 20th Century's great experimenters, who consistently pushed the boundaries of literature.

In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire....

Cosimo di Rondo, a young Italian nobleman of the 18th century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by and a new century dawn....

Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II, 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....