“Though I leave the house as little as possible, I have the impression that someone is disturbing my papers. More than once I have discovered that some pages were missing from my manuscripts. A few days afterward I would find the pages in their place again. But often I no longer recognize my manuscripts, as if I had forgotten what I had written, or as if overnight I were so changed that no longer recognized myself in the self of yesterday.”

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.