Italo Calvino was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Cosmicomics is a collection of twelve short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. The stories were originally published between 1964 and 1965 in the Italian periodicals Il Caffè and Il Giorno. Each story takes a scientific "fact", and builds an imaginative story around it. An always-extant being called Qfwfq narrates all of the stories save two. Every story is a memory of an event in the history of the universe. Qfwfq also narrates some stories in Calvino's t zero.
If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book he or she is reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1981.
Invisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. However, narration is merely optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows, and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.
Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story ; the "dribble" ; the "drabble" ; "sudden fiction" ; "flash fiction" ; and "microstory".
William Fense Weaver was an English language translator of modern Italian literature.
Timothy Harold Parks is a British novelist, translator, author and professor of literature.
Mr. Palomar is a 1983 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. Its original Italian title is Palomar. In an interview with Gregory Lucente, Calvino stated that he began writing Mr. Palomar in 1975, making it a predecessor to earlier published works such as If on a winter's night a traveler. Mr. Palomar was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1985.
"The Exiles" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It was originally published as "The Mad Wizards of Mars" in Maclean's on September 15, 1949 and was reprinted, in revised form, the following year by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. First collected in The Illustrated Man (1951), it was later included in the collections R Is for Rocket (1962), Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003), A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) and A Pleasure to Burn.
t zero is a 1967 collection of short stories by Italian author Italo Calvino. The title story is based on a particularly uncertain moment in the life of a lion hunter. This second in time, t0, is considered by the hunter against known previous seconds and hypothetical future seconds
The death of the novel is the common name for the theoretical discussion of the declining importance of the novel as literary form. Many 20th century authors entered into the debate, often sharing their ideas in their own fiction and non-fiction writings.
Duluth is a 1983 novel by Gore Vidal. He considered it one of his best works, as did Italo Calvino, who wrote, "Vidal's development...along that line from Myra Breckinridge to Duluth, is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, each one filled with meaning, not only for the craftsmanship in construction, put together like a clock-work which fears no word processor, but because this latest book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls 'après post-structuralism'. I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or the cube."
The Crow Comes Last is a short story collection by Italo Calvino published in 1949. It consists of thirty stories inspired by the novelist's own experiences fighting with the Communist Garibaldi Brigades in the Maritime Alps during the final phases of World War II. The stories also include sharp observations on the panorama of postwar Italy. Although written largely in the neorealist style, many scenes are infused with visionary, fable-like elements characteristic of Calvino's later fantasy period.
The Nonexistent Knight is an allegorical fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, first published in Italian in 1959 and in English translation in 1962.
The Complete Cosmicomics is a 2009 book that collects almost all of the Cosmicomic stories by Italian postmodern writer Italo Calvino.
The Literature of Exhaustion is a 1967 essay by the American novelist John Barth sometimes considered to be the manifesto of postmodernism.
La Rondinaia is a villa in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy.