ha

My favourite story in this collection is The Baron in the Trees which is a wonderful fairy tale about a kid who wouldn't finish his dinner, decides to live in a tree, and crosses Europe from Italy to southern Spain without once touching the ground. It is a beautiful, masterful tale that reminds us how man in the last 6 or 7 centuries has destroyed many of the forests and natural diversity that existed on the Mediterranean coast in the middle ages. It can be read again and again and is absolutely captivating. That reminds me that I still need to read it to my kid!The other two stories in this collection, The Cloven Viscount and The Non-Existent are both exemplary of the softer more dreamy side of Calvino's writing and incredible imagination.

The great Pirandello's (1867-1936) 1926 novel, previously published here in 1933 in another translation, synthesizes the themes and personalities that illuminate such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author.Vitangelo Moscarda ``loses his reality'' when his wife cavalierly informs him that his nose tilts to the right; suddenly he realizes that ``for others I was not what till now, privately, I had imagined myself to be,'' and that, consequently, his identity is evanescent, based purely on the shifting perceptions of those around him. Thus he is simultaneously without a self--``no one''--and the theater for myriad selves--``one hundred thousand.'' In a crazed search for an identity independent of others' preconceptions, Moscarda careens from one disaster to the next and finds his freedom even as he is declared insane.It is Pirandello's genius that a discussion of the fundamental human inability to communicate, of our essential solitariness, and of the inescapable restriction of our free will elicits such thoroughly sustained and earthy laughter.

Nelle Langhe, durante la guerra partigiana, Milton (quasi una controfigura di Fenoglio stesso), è un giovane studente universitario, ex ufficiale che milita nelle formazioni autonome. Eroe solitario, durante un'azione militare rivede la villa dove aveva abitato Fulvia, una ragazza che egli aveva amato e che ancora ama. Mentre visita i luoghi del suo amore, rievocandone le vicende, viene a sapere che Fulvia si è innamorata di un suo amico, Giorgio: tormentato dalla gelosia, Milton tenta di rintracciare il rivale, scoprendo che è stato catturato dai fascisti...

Tales of love and loneliness in which the author blends reality and illusion. “The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work,...and a certain lovable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading” (Margaret Atwood). Translated by William Weaver, Peggy Wright, and Archibald Colquhoun. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

A man is found shot in his garden, in a village not far from Vienna. Unable to be defined as either a suicide or a homicide, the death is called one of "mysterious circumstances." The garden--unlike the prominent citizen's life--is highly unusual, a "concentric maze of ten-foot-high hedges leading to a chessboard-shaped clearing paved with squares of white and black marble." Frisch, the murdered man, was obsessed with chess, and the novel's chilling first sentence--"They say that chess was born in bloodshed"--bears this out. In this first novel, Paolo Maurensig coolly executes the ultimate drama of manipulation--life as a game of chess. On this armature, he hangs a tale of vengeance set against a backdrop of historic villainy, Nazi against Jew. The two chess players are as black and white as can be--a persecuted Jew and a ruthless, persecuting German who first "duel" over a chessboard in an international tournament, and then in a concentration camp. The narrative is a meticulous reconstruction of the moments and background events that led to Frisch's death. Ingeniously referring everything back to the machinations and executions of movements in a chess game, life itself is at stake as the inescapable sins of the past catch up with the chess-obsessed characters.

On a small Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea there lives a boy as innocent as a seabird. Arturo's mother is dead; his father away. Black-clad women care for him, give him the freedom to come and go as he likes. Then the father returns with a new wife, Nunziata, a girl barely older than Arturo. At first hatred and contempt are all the boy feels for his stepmother. In time, Arturo and Nunziata re-create the tragedy and passion that are as old as the history of men and women.

Una storia semplice è una storia complicatissima, un giallo siciliano, con sfondo di mafia e droga. Eppure mai – ed è un vero tour de force – l'autore si trova costretto a nominare sia l'una sia l'altra parola. Tutto comincia con una telefonata alla polizia, con un messaggio troncato, con un apparente suicidio. E subito, come se assistessimo alla crescita accelerata di un fiore, la storia si espande, si dilata, si aggroviglia, senza lasciarci neppure l'opportunità di riflettere. Davanti alla proliferazione dei fatti, non solo noi lettori ma anche l’unico personaggio che nel romanzo ricerca la verità, un brigadiere, siamo chiamati a far agire nel tempo minimo i nostri riflessi – un tempo che può ridursi, come in una memorabile scena del romanzo, a una frazione di secondo. È forse questo l'estremo azzardo concesso a chi vuole «ancora una volta scandagliare scrupolosamente le possibilità che forse ancora restano alla giustizia».

Set in the sweltering summer of 1938 in Portugal, a country under the Fascist shadow of Spain, PEREIRA MAINTAINS tells a tale of reluctant heroism. Dr. Peirera, an editor at a second-rate Lisbon newspaper, wants nothing to do with European politics. He's happy to translate 19th-century French stories. His closest confidante is a photograph of his late wife. All this changes when he meets Francesco Monteiro Rossi, an oddly charismatic young man. Pereira gives Rossi work, and continues to pay him, even after discovering that he is using the money to recruit for the anti-Franco International Brigade. PEREIRA MAINTAINS chronicles Pereira's ascent to consciousness, culminating in a devastating and reckless act of rebellion.Lisboa, 1938. Bajo la opresiva dictadura de Salazar, el furor de la guerra civil espanola llamando a la puerta y el fascismo italiano de fondo, Pereira, un periodista dedicado a la seccion de sucesos, recibe el encargo de dirigir la pagina cultural de un mediocre periodico. Necesitado de un colaborador, contacta con Monteiro Rossi, joven inequivocamente comprometido con la vida. La intensa relacion que se establece entre el viejo periodista, Monteiro y su novia Marta, cristalizara en una crisis personal, una maduracion interior y una dolorosa toma de conciencia que transformara profundamente la vida de Pereira.

Italo Calvino was only twenty-three when he first published this bold and imaginative novel. It 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 a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of these characters, seen through the eyes of a child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian resistance but an insightful coming-of-age story.Updated to include changes from Calvino's definitive Italian edition, previously censored passages, and his newly translated, unabridged preface, in which Calvino brilliantly critiques and places into historical context his own youthful work.The Path to the Spiders' Nests is animated by the formidable imagination that has made Italo Calvino one of the most respected writers of our time.

Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is simply seeking knowledge; 'it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath'. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar's observations render the world afresh.

Six Memos for the Millennium is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watchwords for our appreciation of Calvino himself.What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, to each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. A sixth lecture, on consistency, was never committed to paper, and we are left only to ponder the possibilities. With this book, he gives us the most eloquent defense of literature written in the twentieth century as a fitting gift for the next millennium.

Anguila, the narrator, is a successful businessman lured home from California to the Piedmontese village where he was fostered by peasants. After 20 years, so much has changed. Slowly, with the power of memory, he is able to piece together the past, and relate it to what he finds left in the present. He looks at the lives and sometimes violent fates of the villagers he has known since childhood, seeing the poverty, ignorance, or indifference that binds them to the hills and valleys against the beauty of the landscape and the rhythm of the seasons. With stark realism and muted compassion, Pavese weaves separate strands of narrative together, bringing them to a stark and poignant climax.

La boutique del mistero è una raccolta di trentuno racconti pubblicati in diversi volumi e ordinati dallo stesso autore "nella speranza di far conoscere il meglio di quanto ho scritto". Il racconto di Buzzati è un momento di indagine profonda, un'esplorazione emozionante in un'atmosfera magica. Poche volte, nella letteratura italiana, uno scrittore ha indagato così a fondo il mistero che circonda l'uomo contemporaneo, le debolezze e i paradossi che lo caratterizzano, la sua solitudine, le sue esperienze. In quest'ottica, La boutique del mistero (con i suoi più famosi racconti: Il colombre, I sette messageri, Sette piani, Il mantello) offre al lettore la possibilità di sperimentare la finezza di stile di cui uno dei più grandi autori italiani del Novecento, nelle cui pagine coesistono allegorie inquietanti, spunti surreali, invenzioni fantastiche e dati di cronaca, o presunti tali, che sembrano rimandare a possibili realtà metafisiche.

The Things We Used to Say (published in an earlier translation as Family Sayings) asks to be read as fiction, though the author admits that it is highly autobiographical. The book spans the period from the rise of fascism in Italy through World War II and its immediate aftermath. The subject of this book is the inconsequential, revealing remarks that are repeated in a family until they become its affectionate private code, rich in memory and association. Here is one of the rare true evocations of a family in modern literature.

In 1929, the fifth year of the Fascist era and the twenty-first year of Alberto Moravia's life, the Italian literary world was stunned by the appearance of his first novel, The Time of Indifference. It is a deceptively simple story – five characters, the events of a few days, the intrigues of families and lovers.The place is Rome. The central figure is Michele, a young man in confused but furious rebellion against the emptiness of bourgeois life. His father is dead; his mother, Mariagrazia, desperately clings to her bored lover, Leo; his sister has no hope of marriage or career and bleakly prepares to give herself to Leo as well. A frequent visitor is Leo's former lover, Lisa, ostensibly Mariagrazia's friend, a woman who feels she is in the final late bloom before age destroys beauty. She longs to make Michele her lover, but he is bored and disgusted by her pretenses, her vanity, her desperation.All five are cast loose on the sea of modern life – obsessed with what they want, what they feel they are owed, the wrongs that have been done them, their loneliness. What Moravia destroys forever in this pitiless novel is the illusion that a world of ever-growing material comfort can ever feed the human soul.

Often likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

Un uomo, "un borghese nel pieno della vita, intelligente, corrotto, ricco e fortunato", si innamora di una giovanissima ragazza squillo. La storia è tutta qui, ma Buzzati distilla i sentimenti - l'amore, le ossessioni, il senso di solitudine - li astrae dalla mediocrità dei personaggi, dalle loro vite squallide; li cala in una Milano sordida e sfuggente, che macina le esistenze in un ingranaggio implacabile. Ce li offre in una prosa fluida, libera, li ritrae con dialoghi essenziali e fulminanti.E da vita a un capolavoro.