Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world\"s greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith....

Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer\"s life shed no light on the creative work. But this volume of posthumously collected personal writings is the closest we will ever come to the autobiography of this most private of writers....

Set in Italy in the summer of 1940, this trio of stories explores the relationships between the different generations caught up in the war as well as Calvino\"s own experiences as a teenager....

A spectacular display of this key European writer\"s early work This dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino\"s unique perspective and narrative gifts....

\"I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends\" Salman Rushdie From the age of twelve, the Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo makes his home among ash, elm, magnolia, plum and almond, living up in the trees....

\"When the last fire goes out, time too will be finished\" Italo Calvino was one of the most joyful and imaginative writers of the twentieth century. Here he muses on what the things we leave behind - whether waxworks or ancient graffiti, enigmatic maps or a crumbling Roman column - tell us about the greater truths of the world, space and time....

Brought together for the first time, here are 100 pieces of \"Oulipo\" writing, celebrating the literary group who revelled in maths problems, puzzles, trickery, wordplay and conundrums. Featuring writers including Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, it includes poems, short stories, word games and even recipes....

\"Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.\" Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomic short stories. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour....

From fabulous enchantments and supernatural horrors to subtler, more psychological terrors, the best of nineteenth-century fantastic literature is collected here by Italo Calvino....

Italo Calvino\"s enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures, The Complete Cosmicomics is translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks and William Weaver in Penguin Modern Classics....

Meticulously selected and artfully recreated, the selection of stories in Italian is vast and ranges geographically from Corsica and Sicily to Venice and the Alps. Calvino is himself clearly captivated by the folkloric imagination and communicates this in what is a fascinating and rich addition to folk literature....

A witty, elegant novel about looking, seeing, thinking, knowing and understanding Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is seeking knowledge; \"it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath\"....

\"Brilliant-a feast\" Guardian \"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...

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....

La bizzarra storia del visconte Medardo di Terralba che, colpito al petto da una cannonata turca, torna a casa diviso in due meta (una cattiva, malvagia, prepotente, ma dotata di inaspettate doti di umorismo e realismo, l\"altra gentile, altruista, buona, o meglio \\\"buonista\\\")....