Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985) (pronounced [ˈiː.ta.lo kalˈviː.no]) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. 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...
more »Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985) (pronounced [ˈiː.ta.lo kalˈviː.no]) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. 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).
His style is not easily classified; much of his writing has an air of light fantasy reminiscent of fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called "postmodern", reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled "magical realist", others fables, others simply "modern". Twelve years before his death, he was invited to and joined the Oulipo group of experimental writers. He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."
(from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino)
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