ITALO CALVINO

Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de Las Vegas (Cuba) in 1923. He studied at the Cassinis High School in Sanremo, where he was the class mate of the future editor of La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari. He fought as a partisan in the war, an experience that inspired one of the cornerstones of writing on the Italian resistance, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno) (1947). He subsequently worked with various newspapers and magazines, his activities including that of editorial consulting. He also spent a long period in France. Politically active with the Italian Communist Party, he dissociated himself from it following the events in Hungary. In response to the PCI's wait-and-see policy towards the events, he wrote the fierce apologue La Grande Bonaccia delle Antille, published in 1957 in Città aperta.

The best known of his numerous narrative works include The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato) (1952), Baron in the Trees (Il barone rampante) (1957), The Non-Existent Knight (Il cavaliere inesistente) (1959), The Watcher (La giornata di uno scrutatore) (1963), Cosmicomics (Le cosmicomiche) (1965), T-Zero (Ti con zero) (1968), Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) (1972), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (Il castello dei destini incrociati) (1973), If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) (1979) and Mr Palomar (Palomar) (1983).

In 1956, he published a selection of  Italian Fables (Fiabe italiane), gathered from the dialects of the various Italian regions. He also wrote a famous children's book entitled Marcovaldo (1963). Una pietra sopra (1980) draws together numerous writings on the literary debate of the period. Collezione di sabbia (1984) contains selected prose intended for special occasions. For a five year period from 1974 onwards, he contributed to Corriere della Sera with short stories, accounts of travels, and writings on the political and social situation in the country. From 1979, he continued this activity in the columns of La Repubblica until the time of his death in 1985 at the hospital of Siena.

Return to Stories