Publisher Description
When a nobleman is split in two, his separate halves pursue different adventures in a fantastically macabre tale by the author of Invisible Cities.
It is the seventeenth century, and the Viscount Medardo of Terralba must go into battle against the Turks. But the inexperienced warrior is soon bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. Through a miracle of stitching, one half of him survives, returning to his feudal estate to lead a lavishly evil life. But soon his other, virtuous half appears—also very much alive. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there’s no telling the lengths each will go to in order to win.
Now available in an independent volume for the first time, this deliciously bizarre novella of is Calvino at his most devious and winning.
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“Ironical and successful…The visual images, the playfulness, work better and more simply in this—to make it more real.”
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Kirkus Reviews
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 Edoardo Ballerini
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.