Last Comes the Raven

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 revea...