These early short stories brim with the beauty of the Italian countryside and seaside, telling tales both sumptuous and unnerving. Calvino's war-torn Italy is vivid, intense, almost hyper-real. A trio of greedy burglars rob a pastry shop, a boy offers a girl presents of toads and insects from the garden, a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In every story he reveals the hidden meaning beneath the surface of everyday life, and the ludicrousness of war. Some stories from Last Comes the Raven have been previously available in the collection Adam, One Afternoon. This new expanded collection includes several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein and is an important addition to Calvino's legacy. 'In Last Comes the Raven, a collection of early stories, we find the man behind the magician' New Yorker

The Leopard is a modern classic which tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. 'There is a great feeling of opulence, decay, love and death about it' Rick Stein In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them. 'Every once in a while, like certain golden moments of happiness, infinitely memorable, one stumbles on a book or a writer, and the impact is like an indelible mark. Lampedusa's The Leopard, his only novel, and a masterpiece, is such a work' Independent INCLUDES RECENTLY DISCOVERED NEW MATERIAL 'Perhaps the greatest novel of the century L.P. Hartley 'The poetry of Lampedusa's novel flows into the Sicilian countryside...a work of great artistry' Peter Ackroyd

A man is shot dead as he runs to catch the bus in the piazza of a small Sicilian town. Captain Bellodi, the detective on the case, is new to his job and determined to prove himself. Bellodi suspects the Mafia, and his suspicions grow when he finds himself up against an apparently unbreachable wall of silence. A surprise turn puts him on the track of a series of nasty crimes. But all the while Bellodi's investigation is being carefully monitored by a host of observers, near and far. They share a single concern: to keep the truth from coming out.
This short, beautifully paced novel is a mesmerizing description of the Mafia at work.

Title: Amongst the Shans ... With ... illustrations, and an historical sketch of the Shans by Holt S. Hallett ... Preceded by an introduction on the cradle of the Shan race by Terrien de Lacouperie.Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.The GENERAL HISTORICAL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This varied collection includes material that gives readers a 19th century view of the world. Topics include health, education, economics, agriculture, environment, technology, culture, politics, labour and industry, mining, penal policy, and social order. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Colquhoun, Archibald; Hallett, Holt; 1885. lv. 392 p.; 8 . 10057.df.12.

Introduction by David Gilmour; Translation by Archibald Colquhoun

Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war. Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. He was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in 1985. Martin L. McLaughlin is Professor of Italian and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of Magdalen College. In addition to his published academic works he is the English translator of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino among many others.

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.

This is a new release of the original 1960 edition.

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A Biography Of The Author Of The Betrothed, I Promessi Sposi.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

A lost literary classic, written in 1894, The Viceroys is one of the most acclaimed masterworks of Italian realism. The novel follows three generations of the aristocratic Uzeda family as it struggles to hold on to power in the face of the cataclysmic changes rocking Sicily. As Garibaldi's triumphs move Italy toward unification, the Uzedas try every means to retain their position. De Roberto's satirical and mordant pen depicts a cast of upper-class schemers, headed by the old matriarch, Donna Teresa, and exemplified by her arrogant and totally unscrupulous son, Consalvo, who rises to political eminence through lip service, double-dealing, and hypocrisy. The Viceroys is a vast dramatic panorama: a new world fighting to shrug off the viciousness and iniquities of the old.