Last Comes the Raven: And Other Stories: The First Complete English Edition of Italo Calvino's Postwar Italian Short Stories - Softcover

Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection — one of Calvino's earliest — take place in a World War II-era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller's later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits — and his life — when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Throughout, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.