“San Remo continues to pop out in my books, in the most diverse pieces of writing.”
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Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian novelist and short story writer. 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).
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culture · Italian author (1923–1985) · writer · journalist · essayist · novelist · screenwriter · literary editor · critic · librettist · also Italo Calvino, Italo Giovanni Calvino, Calvino
Born 15 October 1923 · Died 19 September 1985 · Q154756
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2026· 1 entry
2024· 1 entry
BBC: Italo Calvino
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2023· 3 entries
Creative Review: Italo Calvino gets the illustration treatment in new Vintage series
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The Guardian: The Written World and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino review – exquisite flights of imagination
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The Guardian: The Written World and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino review – a box of delights
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2022· 1 entry
Publishers Weekly: Books by Italo Calvino and Complete Book Reviews
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2016· 1 entry
The Guardian: Six Memos for the Next Millennium review – Italo Calvino’s Harvard lectures
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2013· 2 entries
The New Yorker: The Letters of Italo Calvino, Day V
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If on a winter's night a traveler Archived 6 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine First chapter excerpts
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1988· 1 entry
And in English as Six Memos for the Next Millennium in 1993
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1985· 2 entries
Died 1985-09-19.
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And rare footage from RAI, INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel), and BBC television archives
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1981· 1 entry
Also accepted the role of jury president for the 38th Venice Film Festival
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1978· 1 entry
At the age of 92, Calvino sold Villa Meridiana, the family home in San Remo
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1976· 2 entries
Awarded Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1976).
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Visited Mexico, Japan, and the United States, where he gave a series of lectures in several American cities
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1975· 1 entry
Calvino was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy
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1968· 1 entry
To join the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) group of experimental writers where he met Roland Barthes and Georges Perec, who would influence his later work
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1967· 1 entry
Taking up residence in a villa in the Square de Châtillon
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1962· 2 entries
Calvino met Argentinian translator Esther Judith Singer ("Chichita") and married her in 1964 in Havana, during a trip in which he visited his birthplace and was introduced to Ernesto "Che" Guevara
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And 1970, Calvino described himself as "atheist" and his outlook as "non-religious"
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1959· 1 entry
Became co-editor of Il Menabò, a cultural journal devoted to literature in the modern industrial age, a position he held until 1966
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1957· 3 entries
Awarded Viareggio Prize (1957).
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Disillusioned by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Calvino left the Italian Communist Party
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The fantasy is based on the "problem of the intellectual's political commitment at a time of shattered illusions"
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1954· 1 entry
Giulio Einaudi commissioned his Fiabe italiane (1956; Italian Folktales) on the basis of the question, "Is there an Italian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm
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1952· 3 entries
“s head offices in Rome. He also worked for Il Contemporaneo, a Marxist weekly. From 1955 to 1958 Calvino had an affair with Italian actress Elsa De Giorgi, a married, older woman. Excerpts of the hundreds of love letters Calvino wrote to her were published in the Corriere della Sera in 2004, causing some controversy. After communism In 1957, disillusioned by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Calvino left the Italian Communist Party. In his letter of resignation published in l”
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Calvino wrote with Giorgio Bassani for Botteghe Oscure, a magazine named after the popular name of the party's head offices in Rome
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Winning the Saint-Vincent Prize for journalism
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1950· 1 entry
Responsible this time for the literary volumes
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1948· 1 entry
Interviewed one of his literary idols, Ernest Hemingway, travelling with Natalia Ginzburg to his home in Stresa
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1947· 2 entries
“s Necklace (1952–54), but all were deemed defective. Calvino”
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Graduated with a Master's thesis on Joseph Conrad, wrote short stories in his spare time, and landed a job in the publicity department at the Einaudi publishing house run by Giulio Einaudi
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1945· 1 entry
After a long hesitation over living there or in Milan
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1943· 1 entry
And reluctantly passed three more exams in agriculture
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1941· 1 entry
Calvino enrolled at the University of Turin, choosing the Agriculture Faculty where his father had previously taught courses in agronomy
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1938· 1 entry
Eugenio Scalfari, who went on to found the weekly magazine L'Espresso and La Repubblica, a major Italian newspaper, came from Civitavecchia to join the same class though a year younger, and they shared the same desk
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1925· 1 entry
Less than two years after Calvino's birth, the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian coast
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1923· 1 entry
Born 1923-10-15.
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1917· 1 entry
Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution
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1909· 1 entry
Where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture
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