Last Comes the Raven

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. One of the most respected writers of the twentieth century, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. A collection of Calvino's posthumous personal writings, The Hermit in Paris, was published in 2003.

In these beautifully translated stories, the quality of the writing emerges as clearly as do the ease and range of his inventiveness. Calvino's special gift is to link the physical and immediate with an allegorical timelessness. All the characters and creatures in these stories conspire to convey a feeling of the wonder, mystery and terror of life