Italo Calvino

The Castle of Crossed Destinies is a 1973 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. Its narrative details a meeting among travelers who are inexplicably unable to speak after traveling through a forest. The characters in the novel recount their tales via Tarot cards, which are reconstructed by the narrator. The novel …

Set on the Ligurian coast during World War II, The Path to the Spiders' Nests tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice who lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spend as much time as he can at the local bar. When his friends dare him to steal a pistol from a Nazi soldier, he sets off on a series of picaresque …

'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, …