Pagine1923–1985 · Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba (raised in Sanremo, Italy) · also known as Calvino
Italo Calvino moved from neorealist war stories to dazzling fables. He gathered 200 Italian Folktales (1956), wrote The Baron in the Trees (1957), about a boy who climbs into the trees and never comes down, and then the playful experiments Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979), a novel about you, the reader, trying to read a novel.
Begin with Invisible Cities.
Part of our Italian Classics reading list — print it, email it to yourself or share it.
Dante Alighieri · Petrarch · Giovanni Boccaccio · Niccolò Machiavelli · Alessandro Manzoni · Carlo Collodi · Luigi Pirandello · Primo Levi
Italo Calvino moved from neorealist war stories to dazzling fables. He gathered 200 Italian Folktales (1956), wrote The Baron in the Trees (1957), about a boy who climbs into the trees and never comes down, and then the playful experiments Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979), a novel about you, the reader, trying to read a novel.
Invisible Cities is usually considered Italo Calvino’s best-known work, followed by If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, The Baron in the Trees, Italian Folktales.
Most readers start with Invisible Cities.
Both refer to the same writer.
Italo Calvino’s books are still under copyright, so they are not free to download, but many can be borrowed free from your public library or Open Library — we link to them below.