Translated by Tim Parks

‘Brimming with Calvino’s beautifully crafted prose, dry humour and continual questioning of his own writing and memory’ Observer

In five elegant autobiographical meditations

Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the language

and sensations of emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with his usual alchemical

brilliance.

‘Urbane and always elegant … shows us what a master we have lost in Italo Calvino’ Literary Review