Our Ancestors

Our Ancestors

by ItaloCalvino (Author)

Synopsis

Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino's classic triptych of moral tales, now published in one volume and all displaying the exuberant talent of a master storyteller.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Edition: Re-issue
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Published: 20 Feb 1992

ISBN 10: 009943086X
ISBN 13: 9780099430865
Book Overview: 'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times

Media Reviews
Italo Calvino has advanced far beyond his American and English contemporaries, as they continue to look for the place where the spiders make their nests, Calvino has not only found that special place but learnt how himself to make fantastic webs of prose to which all things adhere -- Gore Vidal
Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before.This is highly unnerving: fortunately you're usually too busy laughing to go mad... I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends -- Salman Rushdie
The writing is just breathtaking and the final story, 'The Non-Existent Knight', still sends a shiver up my spine -- Jilly Cooper
Calvino's genius lies not so much in this tantalising conceit, but the brilliance and ingenuity with which he pulls it off...A dazzling display of literary fireworks * Independent *
Calvino's refusal to be glum set him apart from other modernists. His marvellous Fifties trilogy, Our Ancestors, brought us allegorical fables about a cloven viscount, a non-existent knight and a baron who swings from the trees * Guardian *
Author Bio
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923. He grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985.