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Biographical note
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. One of the most respected writers of the twentieth century, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. A collection of Calvino's posthumous personal writings, The Hermit in Paris, was published in 2003.Calvino is surely among the handful of living writers that can be called, without hesitation, great. Each book by Calvino is a completely original conception. <i>Marcovaldo</i> is one of the best works of fiction published
Spectator
The greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century
Guardian
It is the refinement, the oddness and the humour of the thoughts he gets which make Calvino a rare pleasure to read; he is a match for Borges as he stealthily patrols the limits of the unthinkable
New Review
He will continue to glitter, this strange, lonely prospector in the universe of words, well into the next millennium and after, a master in the empire of the imagination
Independent
What is so much admired by the readers of Mr. Calvino's later <i>Invisible Cities</i> was already at work in <i>Marcovaldo</i> and with a more cogent narrative drive... <i>Marcovaldo</i> conveys the sensuous, tangible qualities of life
New York Times
Marcovaldo is an enchanting collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. Calvino charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disasters with a surrealistic view of city life through the eyes of an outsider. As always with Calvino, nothing is quite as it seems.
'Delightful and rewarding as always' Observer
'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times