Italo Calvino

Journalist and writer

Italian novelist Italo Calvino is one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of the twentieth century. His work has been praised for its unique combination of imaginative yet grounded storytelling, inventive structure and subtle humor. Before becoming a novelist, Calvino was already a journalist and essayist with a long-standing interest in the burgeoning Italian disillusionment with traditional European trends. In journalism and in his fiction, Calvino sought a path between the real and the fantastic, combining his own experiences in post-war Italy with dreams, visions, stories and observations about the changing world around him. Throughout his career, Calvino published historical fiction and fantasy, often mixing elements of the two genres. His 1959 novel The Baron in the Trees, for example, has characters based on real historical figures but is framed by a whimsical and far-fetched dream-like atmosphere. Similarly, in the 1972 novel Invisible Cities, Calvino re-imagines thirteen cities and their citizens as haunting metaphors for the unsettled times of the 1960s and 70s. Calvino was also a pioneer in the realm of experimental prose and structure. In his 1973 novel If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, he creates a work in which the reader is constantly joining in the middle of stories, jumping between characters and settings with a playful, intricate technique. These techniques have made Calvino a formative influence on superstar authors like David Mitchell and Salman Rushdie. Calvino’s works remain popular and widely read, not only in his homeland of Italy but around the world. His writing has earned him international recognition, including the prestigious French Prix mondial Cino Del Duca award in 1987. He will forever be remembered as one of the great authors of the post-war era, a shrewd observer and cunningly imaginative storyteller.