Intricate interior lives are brilliantly explored in these short stories, now presented in one definitive collection as Calvino intended themIn
Difficult Loves,Italy’s master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love—including self-love—are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady’s bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
This is the first edition in English to present the collection as Calvino originally envisioned it, and includes two stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein.
Intricate interior lives are brilliantly explored in these short stories, now presented in this collection as Calvino intended them.
ITALO CALVINO’s superb storytelling gifts earned him international renown. At the time of his death, in 1985, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer.
ANN GOLDSTEIN has translated widely from the Italian, including works of Elena Ferrante and Primo Levi.
PART 1
Difficult Loves
The Adventure of a Soldier
In the compartment, a lady came and sat down, tall and buxom, next to Private Tomagra. She must have been a widow from the provinces, to judge by her dress and her veil: the dress was black silk, appropriate for prolonged mourning, but with useless frills and furbelows; and the veil went all around her face, falling from the brim of a massive, old-fashioned hat. Other places were free, there in the compartment, Private Tomagra noticed, and he had assumed the widow would surely choose one of them. But, on the contrary, despite the vicinity of a coarsls6
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