Calvino, Italo

New York. 1995. November 1995. Pantheon Books. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 0679442057. Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks. 277 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Kathleen DiGrado. keywords: Literature Translated Italy . FROM THE PUBLISHER - A major literary event: published for the first time in English, this enchanting collection of diabolically brilliant stories, fables, and ‘impossible interviews' confirms ltalo Calvino ‘s stature as one of the essential writers of the twentieth century. A list of ‘abominable deeds' is found among the charred remains of a house and the four bodies in it, and it is up to a computer programmer to discover who composed the macabre inventory - before he himself becomes ensnared in the deadly conspiracy. A tourist encounters a whole new machinery for the attainment of egalitarianism: the beheading of state officials at the end of their respective terms. Coming to you live from the picturesque Neander Valley just outside Düsseldorf an interviewer asks the 35,000- year-old Neanderthal Man to justify the fact that his mere endurance is his sole claim to fame. And the legendary lover Casanova tells of the one who got away: was the woman who offered up every part of herself, spiritual and otherwise, in fact employing a cunning strategy to evade capture? Written between 1943 and 1984, and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, these several dozen short fictions are whimsical and horrific, feverish and delightful, tragic and wry, sweet and brutal - sometimes alternately, sometimes all at once. Ranging over a panoply of concerns - politics, the nature of power, the implications of a relentless application of technology, the quest for truth) and the elusive possibility of human connection - they are all of them pure Calvino. inventory #21752 ISBN: 0679442057.