Picador Books Series

A translated collection of early stories by Calvino. The earliest were written in 1945 when he was 22, and the latest date from the 50s when he was in his early 30s. Calvino's novels include Invisible Cities and The Castle of Crossed Destinies.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

by Italo Calvino

Published 6 July 1981

You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.

Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino

Published 8 June 1979

Fifty-five fictional cities, each described in beautiful detail - each with a woman's name...

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'

This is a captivating meditation on culture, language, time, memory and the nature of human experience.

'Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose... The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island' Jeanette Winterson

'Touches inexhaustibly on the essence of the human urge to create cities, be in cities, speak of cities' Guardian

'A subtle and beautiful meditation' Sunday Times

Marcovaldo

by Italo Calvino

Published 30 August 1983

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.

Mr.Palomar

by Italo Calvino

Published 23 September 1985

Our Ancestors

by Italo Calvino

Published 29 September 1980

Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino's classic triptych of moral tales, now published in one volume and all displaying the exuberant talent of a master storyteller.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

by Italo Calvino

Published 1 January 1977

A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of all human consciousness.

Adam, One Afternoon

by Italo Calvino

Published 28 February 1983

This collection of playful, deadly fables is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story "The Argentine Ant" moved Gore Vidal to declare 'if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better'.

The Literature Machine

by Italo Calvino

Published 6 April 1987

'This brilliant collection of essays should be a feast for his admirers, as well as for those who approach his dazzling oeuvre for the first time-Calvino is not only constantly and supremely intelligent; he is constantly and supremely faithful to his narrative imagination' Guardian