Publisher Description
The first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino’s important early short story collections Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection—one of Calvino’s earliest—take place in a World War II–era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits—and his life—when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Throughout, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. Stories from Last Comes the Raven have been published in translation, but the collection as a whole has never appeared in English. This volume, including several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein, is an important addition to Calvino’s legacy.
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About Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (1923-1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. He was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1982. He was born in Cuba and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He began his writing career as an essayist and a journalist but is best known for his fiction, including Invisible Cities, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Marcovaldo, and Mr. Palomar, among others.
About Jefferson Mays
Jefferson Mays, an Earphones Awards-winning narrator, is also an award-winning theater and film actor. In 2004 he won a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, and a Theatre World Award for his solo Broadway performance in I Am My Own Wife, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Doug Wright. He holds a BA from Yale College and an MFA from University of California–San Diego.