“If one starts to draw comparisons between what is and what is not, it is the poorer qualities of the former that strike you, the impurities, the flaws; in short, you can only really feel safe with nothingness.”

Italian novelist and short story writer

Italo Calvino was an Italian novelist and short story writer. He is best known for the Our Ancestors trilogy, published between 1952 and 1959, and for later works such as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveler. His fiction includes the three novels in Our Ancestors, the short story collection Cosmicomics, and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler. These works show the range of his imagination across fiction in different forms, from linked narratives to brief stories and more experimental novels.