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  • Published: 15 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141198323
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 640
  • RRP: $55.00

Letters 1941-1985



The first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century

Italo Calvino, Italy's most important postwar novelist, was also an influential literary critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal, Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The letters included in this selection 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 will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work.

  • Published: 15 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141198323
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 640
  • RRP: $55.00

About the author

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. One of the most respected writers of the twentieth century, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. A collection of Calvino's posthumous personal writings, The Hermit in Paris, was published in 2003.

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