Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was born in Cuba but moved to Italy with his parents at a young age. In 1943, he joined the partisans of the Italian resistance. He made his debut in Italian literature in 1947 with the novel "The Path to the Nest of Spiders," which focused on the Resistance, a theme also explored in his next book, a collection of short stories titled "The Crow Comes Last." He gained fame with the trilogy "Our Ancestors," comprising three short novels: "The Cloven Viscount," "The Baron in the Trees," and "The Nonexistent Knight." In 1956, he published a collection of Italian folk tales titled "Italian Folktales," and two years later, he released "Stories," a collection that includes the well-known series "Difficult Loves." This was followed by two short novels, "Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City" and "The Watcher" (1963), which marked the end of his "neorealist" phase. In 1965 and 1967, he published two collections of "fantastic" stories titled "Cosmicomics" and "t zero." In 1969, he surprised the world with "The Castle of Crossed Destinies." His subsequent works include "Invisible Cities" (1972), "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" (1979), and "Palomar" (1983). After his death, the works "Under the Jaguar Sun," "Six Memos for the Next Millennium" (essay), "The Road to San Giovanni," "Why Read the Classics?" (essay), and "Before You Say 'Hello'" were published.