The first collection of letters in English by one of the great writers
of the twentieth century
This is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of
one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most
important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide
fame with such books as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a
Winter's Night a Traveler. But he was also an influential literary
critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer
whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal,
Leonardo Sciascia, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo
Pasolini, and Luciano Berio. This book includes a generous selection of
about 650 letters, written between World War II and the end of Calvino's
life. Selected and introduced by Michael Wood, the letters are expertly
rendered into English and annotated by well-known Calvino translator
Martin McLaughlin.
The letters are filled with insights about Calvino's writing and that of
others; about Italian, American, English, and French literature; about
literary criticism and literature in general; and about culture and
politics. The book also provides a kind of autobiography, documenting
Calvino's Communism and his resignation from the party in 1957, his
eye-opening trip to the United States in 1959-60, his move to Paris
(where he lived from 1967 to 1980), and his trip to his birthplace in
Cuba (where he met Che Guevara). Some lengthy letters amount almost to
critical essays, while one is an appropriately brief defense of brevity,
and there is an even shorter, reassuring note to his parents written on
a scrap of paper while he and his brother were in hiding during the
antifascist Resistance.
This is a book that will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone
else interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work.
