Italo Calvino Books In Order

Publication Order of Our Ancestors Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Italo Calvino is a famous Italian journalist and writer. He is known for his Our Ancestors trilogy, his novels, and his short stories. He passed away September 19, 1985. He was the most transcribed Italian writer at the time that he passed, and is buried in Tuscany. He has a unique style that has been described as realistic and fantastical depending on the work.

Italo was born October 15, 1923 in Cuba. He grew up in Italy. His father was a botanist and tropical agronomist who also taught on the subject. His mother was also a botanist and a professor at university. The author says his parents had very different personalities. The family went back to Italy to settle in Sanremo. Floriano, the author’s brother, came about in 1927. Calvino has also included the location of San Remo in many of his books.

Italo would spend hours in the trees with his brother, reading their adventure books. He also expressed how speaking with his father was difficult in his memoir, The Road to San Giovanni. The author also thought that being interested in stories when young made him an outcast of sorts because his family valued science over literature. But he was also interested in American cartoons and movies, as well as the arts of theater, poetry, and drawing.

His parents were also free thinkers when he grew up and did not like the National Fascist Party. The parents would not allow their sons to be educated by any religion. So the author went to various schools but did not participate in religion classes. He had to explain his anti-conformism to many different people over the years, but also expressed that it helped make him more tolerant of the opinions of others.

The author would also form a friendship as a teen with Eugenio Scalfari, who would later found a magazine L’Espresso and an Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Calvino even said that his awakening to politics was due to the discussions they had together in university. The two even founded the MUL, a university movement.

Italo was enrolled in the University of Turin in 1941, studying in the Agriculture Faculty. But he really wanted to be a playwright. Even his letters referenced various plays and works of the arts. World War II was starting and Calvino would transfer to the University of Florence in 1943, still studying agriculture. The Germans were on the move at the end of the year, but the author would refuse military service at 20 and go into hiding, reading on many different topics at the time.

His mother would encourage her songs to be part of the Italian Resistance in the spring of 1944, due to justice and family virtues. Calvino joined up and would fight until 1945. But his refusal to be conscripted also meant the Nazis held his parents hostage for some time at their home.

Later, Italo would settle in Turin in 1945. Sometimes he described the city as serious and sad. He went to university and this time pursued the Arts Faculty. He would become part of the world of literature when a short story by the author “Andato al comando’ was published in the university’s weekly magazine Il Politecnico. He also joined the Italian Communist Party and became involved in political life after the war.

Italo graduated with a Master’s thesis written on Joseph Conrad in 1947. He would pen short stories when he had free time, and got a job with a publishing house working in publicity. This put him into contact with many more writers and intellectuals. He would go on to write his first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, published in 1947 and winning the Premio Riccione. The novel did well, selling over 5,000 copies.

Calvino also came out with a story collection called The Crow Comes Last in 1949, based on his experiences during the war. The book did well but he was worried about writing another book that was good enough. He became a consulting editor and worked on his writing while finding new authors and reading texts. His father died not long after, and his correspondence and articles from the visit came out in 1952 and won the Saint-Vincent Prize for journalism.

He would write more novels, but they were not found to be satisfactory. He also chose to start writing naturally on things that he would have liked to read himself, resulting in the fictional 1952 release The Cloven Viscount. He wrote it in a period of thirty days. It’s about a viscount in the 17th century that has been cloven in two thanks to a cannonball and includes his political doubts and elements of the Cold War.

He would also write Italian Folktales in 1956, an answer to the brothers Grimm. He collected stories found in older collections in Italian and translated two hundred of the best into Italian. He would also write for a magazine called Botteghe Oscure and for Il Contemporaneo. He also had an affair for three years with Elsa De Giorgi, a married Italian actress. His love letter excerpts to her came out in 2004 in Corriere della Sera.

He would leave the Italian Communist Party in 1957. He also withdrew from politics and did not join another party. He would then write The Baron in the Trees, done with it in three months. The fantasy story came out in 1957. He would also write in several more journals and became a co-editor of Il Menabo in 1959.

Italo visited the United States for six months. His letters to his friend Einaudi about his visit came out as American Diary 1959-1960 in 2003, featured I Hermit In Paris. He would get married to Esther Judith Singer, an Argentinian translator, in 1964. His daughter was born in 1965, Giovanna, in Rome where they lived. The family would move in 1967 to Paris. He joined the Oulipo, a group of experimental writers, in 1968. He accepted the Asti Prize in 1970 and the Feltrinelli Prize in 1972. He was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy in 1975. He received the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1976. He passed in 1985 and his lecture notes were published after as Six Memos for the Next Millennium.

Italo Calvino is the author of several media works. These include the screenplay for Boccaccio ‘70, the adaptation Ti-Koyo e ill suo pescecane, the 1969 Il Cavaliere Inesistente, and more.

The Cloven Viscount is a 1951 tale from Italo Valvino. This is a macabre fantasy where a noble man sees himself split in two thanks to a cannonball. Then the two different parts of him go on adventures on their own.

Viscount Medardo of Terralba is fighting the Turks when a cannonball bisects him lengthwise. Half of him goes back to his feudal estate and starts living a life of luxury. The other half is more virtuous, and shows up. The two start fighting over a woman’s love and get into a duel with the other, but may be able to resolve the disagreement. A delightfully strange and funny book!

The Baron in the Trees is the second book to come out from Italo Calvino in 1957 as part of the Our Ancestors trilogy.

Cosimo di Rondó is an Italian noble man, attractive and youthful, living in the 18th century. He decides to make a show of fighting against his parents by going into the trees– and staying there for the rest of his life.

He starts to adapt to the forest canopy by living an entire existence up there. He plants crops, hunts, plays games with friends, solves problems of engineering, quells forest fires, and even finds love.

Cosimo watches the Age of Enlightenment go by from up in the trees and a new century come to be. This is a wonderful tale that feels like a classic fairy tale from one of the greats, Italo Calvino.