Marcovaldo: or the Seasons in the City

A charming portrait of one man’s dreams and schemes, by “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (Guardian).

In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and ’60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life.

Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing for the unspoiled rur...