Italo Calvino's Books

Numbers in the Dark

And Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

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Numbers in the Dark

And Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

A posthumously published collection of short stories that span the breadth of Italo Calvino's career.

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288

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544146425

ISBN 13

9780544146426

Difficult Loves

By: Italo Calvino

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The author of Invisible Cities explores love and war “with enormous realist dignity” in this collection of “wondrous work from [his] early career” (Kirkus, starred review). In this short story collection, one of Italy’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’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.

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Page Count

241

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544133412

ISBN 13

9780544133419

Why Read the Classics?

By: Italo Calvino

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Why Read the Classics?

By: Italo Calvino

A posthumously published collection of thirty-six essays offering Italo Calvino's invigorating and illuminating analysis of his most treasured literary classics.

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291

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544146379

ISBN 13

9780544146372

Italo Calvino

Letters, 1941-1985 - Updated Edition

By: Italo Calvino

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Italo Calvino

Letters, 1941-1985 - Updated Edition

By: Italo Calvino

The first collection of letters in English by one of the great writers of the twentieth century This is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide fame with such books as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. But he was also an influential literary critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal, Leonardo Sciascia, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luciano Berio. This book includes a generous selection of about 650 letters, written between World War II and the end of Calvino’s life. Selected and introduced by Michael Wood, the letters are expertly rendered into English and annotated by well-known Calvino translator Martin McLaughlin. The letters are filled with insights about Calvino’s writing and that of others; about Italian, American, English, and French literature; about literary criticism and literature in general; and about culture and politics. The book also provides a kind of autobiography, documenting Calvino’s Communism and his resignation from the party in 1957, his eye-opening trip to the United States in 1959-60, his move to Paris (where he lived from 1967 to 1980), and his trip to his birthplace in Cuba (where he met Che Guevara). Some lengthy letters amount almost to critical essays, while one is an appropriately brief defense of brevity, and there is an even shorter, reassuring note to his parents written on a scrap of paper while he and his brother were in hiding during the antifascist Resistance. This is a book that will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone else interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work.

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Page Count

640

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691162433

ISBN 13

9780691162430

Into the War

By: Italo Calvino

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Into the War

By: Italo Calvino

These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice."--from cover, page [4].

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121

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544146387

ISBN 13

9780544146389

The Uses of Literature

Essays

By: Italo Calvino

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The Uses of Literature

Essays

By: Italo Calvino

In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume. Translated by Patrick Creagh. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

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352

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156932504

ISBN 13

9780156932509

Last Comes the Raven

And Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

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Last Comes the Raven

And Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

“Calvino . . . managed effortlessly what no author in English could quite claim: his novels and stories and fables were both classically modernist and giddily postmodern, embracing both experiment and tradition, at once conceptual and humane, intimate and mythic.” — Jonathan Lethem, New York Times Book Review Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection take place in a World War II–era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities. A trio of gluttonous burglars invades a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits—and his life—when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Select stories from Last Comes the Raven have been published in translation, but the collection as a whole has never appeared in English. This volume, including several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein, is an important addition to Calvino's legacy.

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Page Count

321

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544146700

ISBN 13

9780544146709

Invisible Cities

By: Italo Calvino

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Invisible Cities

By: 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.

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184

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156453800

ISBN 13

9780156453806

The Road to San Giovanni

By: Italo Calvino

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The Road to San Giovanni

By: Italo Calvino

From the Italian author, personal essays featuring his relationship with his father, his love of movies, and fighting fascism during World War II. “In each other’s presence we became mute, would walk in silence side by side along the road to San Giovanni. To my father’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.” —from The Road to San Giovanni In these autobiographical essays, published after Italo Calvino’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’s lyrical evocation of the author’s relationship with his father, and a charming account of teenage years spent in the glow of the cinema screen, to Calvino’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’s visionary fragments, these five “memory exercises” are heartfelt, affecting, and wise. Praise for The Road to San Giovanni “Brimming with Calvino’s beautifully crafted prose, dry humor, and continual questioning . . . Calvino has been very well served by his translator, Tim Parks.” —Observer “In five elegant “memory exercises” 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's lyric, metaphorical, highly elliptical description of his creative process.” —Publishers Weekly

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161

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544230973

ISBN 13

9780544230972

The Written World and the Unwritten World

Essays

By: Italo Calvino

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The Written World and the Unwritten World

Essays

By: Italo Calvino

“Wonderful… Calvino’s prose is sparkling as ever, and he approaches ideas with wit and an open mind, always ready to challenge a stale point of view. This anthology will delight Calvino fans old and new.” —Publishers Weekly A rich collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of Calvino’s approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature. An extraordinary collection of essays, forewords, articles, and interviews, The Written World and the Unwritten World displays the remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit of prolific Italian writer Italo Calvino as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. From classics to contemporary literature, from tradition to the avant-garde, Calvino masterfully explores reading, writing, and translating through careful and illuminating discussion of the works of Bakhtin, Brecht, Cortázar, Thomas Mann, Octavio Paz, Georges Perec, Salman Rushdie, Gore Vidal, and more. Drawn from Mondo scritto e mondo non scritto (2002), Sulla fiaba (1988), and other uncollected essays, this volume of previously untranslated work—now rendered in English by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein—is a major statement in literary criticism.

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321

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

054423085X

ISBN 13

9780544230859

Hermit in Paris

Autobiographical Writings

By: Italo Calvino

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Hermit in Paris

Autobiographical Writings

By: Italo Calvino

A posthumously published collection of Italo Calvino's autobiographical writings recounting his experiences in Italy's antifascist resistance, paying homage to his influences, tracing the evolution of his literary style, and commenting wryly on his travels in the United States.

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273

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544146697

ISBN 13

9780544146693

Mr. Palomar

By: Italo Calvino

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Mr. Palomar

By: Italo Calvino

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 “beautiful, nimble, solitary feats of imagination.” 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. “It is only after you have come to know the surface of things,” he believes, “that you can venture to seek what is underneath.” 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. “Each brief chapter reads like an exploded haiku,” wrote Time Out. A play on a world fragmented by our individual perceptions, this inventive and irresistible novel encapsulates the life’s work of an artist of the highest order, “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (The Guardian).

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Page Count

143

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547542380

ISBN 13

9780547542386

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

By: Italo Calvino

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Six Memos for the Next Millennium

By: Italo Calvino

The celebrated author of Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities shares his “brilliant, original approach to literature” 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 “memo” 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’s “next millennium”. “One of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature.”—Boston Globe “A key to Calvino’s own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world’s greatest writing.”—San Francisco Chronicle

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134

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544230965

ISBN 13

9780544230965

Collection of Sand

By: Italo Calvino

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Collection of Sand

By: Italo Calvino

This “brilliant collection of essays” and travelogues by the celebrated author of Invisible Cities “may change the way you see the world around you” (The Guardian, UK). Italo Calvino’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—both in art and travel—the subjects of these 38 essays range from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. In Calvino’s words, this collection is “a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods…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” (from Collection of Sand). Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, “beautifully translated by Martin McLaughlin” (The Guardian, UK).

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Page Count

233

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544231945

ISBN 13

9780544231948

Italian Folktales

By: Italo Calvino

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Italian Folktales

By: Italo Calvino

One of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times). Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres—as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals—these two hundred tales bring to life Italy’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’s greatest literary icons, “this collection stands with the finest folktale collections anywhere” (The New York Times Book Review). “For readers of any age . . . A masterwork.” —The Wall Street Journal “A magic book, and a classic to boot.” —Time

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Page Count

799

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544283228

ISBN 13

9780544283220

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

By: Italo Calvino

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

By: Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino's classic, multifaceted novel about writing and readers.

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280

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156439611

ISBN 13

9780156439619

The Complete Cosmicomics

By: Italo Calvino

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The Complete Cosmicomics

By: Italo Calvino

The complete collection of “nimble and often hilarious” short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino’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 “cosmic know-it-all” 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—including the Asti d’Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics—these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. “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’s no way I—or anyone, really—can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” —Colin Dwyer, NPR

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Page Count

367

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544231937

ISBN 13

9780544231931

Marcovaldo

Or, The Seasons in the City

By: Italo Calvino

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Marcovaldo

Or, The Seasons in the City

By: Italo Calvino

A charming portrait of one man’s dreams and schemes, by “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (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 ’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’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’s unassuming masterpiece “conveys the sensuous, tangible qualities of life” (The New York Times).

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Page Count

131

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544133226

ISBN 13

9780544133228

Under the Jaguar Sun

By: Italo Calvino

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Under the Jaguar Sun

By: Italo Calvino

One of Italy's greatest and most popular writers offers three witty, fantastical stories, each dominated by one of three senses--taste, hearing, or smell.

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Page Count

100

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156927942

ISBN 13

9780156927949

The Watcher & Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

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The Watcher & Other Stories

By: Italo Calvino

The Italian writer is concerned with grotesque or farcical events of the future.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156949520

ISBN 13

9780156949521

The Path to the Spiders' Nests

By: Italo Calvino

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The Path to the Spiders' Nests

By: Italo Calvino

Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war.

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Page Count

211

Publisher

Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141889594

ISBN 13

9780141889597

The Queen's Necklace

By: Italo Calvino

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The Queen's Necklace

By: Italo Calvino

The inspector ordered that the bird be searched.One of the agents stalled saying it made him feel sick, and after some fierce pecking another withdrew sucking a bleeding finger.' In these two stories from an inventive, comic master of the form, old friends and friendly rivals Pietro and Tommasso discover a treasure lost by the side of the road, and become suspected of a using a blameless chicken for devious ends. Italo Calvino�s writing explores the fringes of these small, unusual scenes and finds incalculable wisdom and humour there. This book contains The Queen's Necklace and The Workshop Hen.

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Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141195835

ISBN 13

9780141195834

Italo Calvino

Letters, 1941-1985 - Updated Edition

By: Italo Calvino

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Italo Calvino

Letters, 1941-1985 - Updated Edition

By: Italo Calvino

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Page Count

640

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691162433

ISBN 13

9780691162430

Fantastic Tales

Visionary and Everyday

By: Italo Calvino

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Fantastic Tales

Visionary and Everyday

By: Italo Calvino

Twenty-six fantasy tales from the 19th century, tracing the genre from its roots in German romanticism to the ghost stories of Henry James. The editor, who prefaces each story, analyzes the resurgence of the fantastic in our day.

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609

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544152093

ISBN 13

9780544152090

The Path to the Nest of Spiders

By: Italo Calvino

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The Path to the Nest of Spiders

By: Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino's debut novel, first published in 1947, tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at the lowlife bar where he amuses the grownups. When his friends dare him to steal a pistol from a Nazi soldier, Pin sets off on a series of picaresque adventures with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of this band, seen through the eyes of the child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian Resistance, but also an insightful coming-of-age story. The Path to the Nest of Spiders is a bold, adventurous first novel, animated by the formidable imagination that was to make Italo Calvino one of the most respected writers of the second half of this century.

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Page Count

145

Published Date

ISBN 10

0880013273

ISBN 13

9780880013277

The Baron in the Trees

By: Italo Calvino

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The Baron in the Trees

By: Italo Calvino

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. Long considered one of Calvino's finest works, The baron in the trees exemplifies this brilliant writer's gift for fantasy."--Page [4] of cover.

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Page Count

319

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544959116

ISBN 13

9780544959118

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