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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 398.210945
EAN num: 9780156454896
ISBN number: 0156454890
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 800
Printing Date: November 15, 1992
Publishing house: Harvest Books
Sale Popularity Level: 27385
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Chosen as one of the New York Times’s ten best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists. Introduction by the Author; illustrations. Translated by George Martin. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
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Rated by buyers -
This is a huge collection of some really fun stories. Most stories are a few pages long and this book is filled with many great stories. I recommend this to anyone that loves folktales and fairy tales.
Rated by buyers -
I bought this for my grand daughter who is half Italian. She enjoys having stories read to her and this is a good book to aquaint her with her Italian heritage.
Rated by buyers -
This was a childhood favorite, and it remains today.
As my family's old copy fell apart, I bought this new one to keep it for the generations and children to come.
I love the virtue and morals behind each story.
It's a beautiful book.
Rated by buyers -
I have an older edition of this book. I quite enjoyed reading it. Of course, I more or less collect compilation of folktales and fairy tales.
Rated by buyers -
Italo Calvino is mostly known for being a brilliant magical realist. But he also collected two hundred Italian folk and fairy tales in "Italian Folktales," apparently because a publisher wanted a sort of Italian Grimm. The resulting collection is actually better than your average fairy tales -- full of the cute, bizarre and funny.
Basically, we have the usual collections of folk-tale oddities -- princesses and princes, talking animals, murderers, dragons, colourful peasants, ghosts, magical rings, bookworms, ogres, merchants, lots of money, wise professors, hunchbacks, people magically turned into dogs, and even an Italian version of Beauty and the Beast.
But there are also plenty of folktales in here that are outright weird: a kid with a goose that causes hands to stick to the holder, a young groom whose night in paradise has tragic consequences, a maid imprisoned in the sea, a girl transformed into a statue, the Queen of Luminous Souls, and a talking buffalo head. Even Jesus Christ and Saint Peter get to star in a longish story.
Fairy tales are always meant for kids, but folktales can be aimed at adults. And there's pretty much half-and-half in "Italian Folktales" -- Calvino includes some stories which are cute and have morals ("Don't be greedy, or a wolf will eat you"), but there are plenty that are weird, bizarre and grotesque (three dead men bowling with skulls).
Calvino can't include too much description, since most of these stories are straight-out fables. But he retells these stories with enchanting flair, funny dialogue and his knack for mixing the magical with the real. And the translator George Martin should get props for preserving the sparkling, spicy flavour of the original stories ("Cro! Cro! We come from brine/On gold and pearls we dine/Belsole's fair, as fair as day...")
These stories aren't the Brothers Grimm -- they're better. Calvino collected stories that were magical, horrifying and extremely funny, and "Italian Folktales" is a delightful, extremely fat book of folk stories.
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