Adam One Afternoon - Softcover

"Italo Calvino's Adam, One Afternoon confirms the part he has played in revitalising the art of fiction in our time. In these beautifully translated stories, the quality of the writing emerges as clearly as do the ease and range of his inventiveness. Calvino's special gift is to link the physical and immediate with an allegorical timelessness-All the characters and creatures in these stories conspire to convey a feeling of the wonder, mystery and terror of life" (Guardian)

"Calvino's strength is his economy and subtlety. The best of his allegorical fantasies have the power of the Brothers Grimm, rollicking stories on the surface, with an underlying savagery" (Listener)

This collection of playful, deadly febles is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story The Argentine Ant moved Gore Vidal to declare 'if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better'.