Şu geçen gemiye dikkat! Italo Calvino'nun Efsunlu Masallar kitabını okuduktan sonra denizden geçen gemilere, tepemizden uçan güvercinlere, girdiğimiz bahçelere artık eskisi gibi bakmamız mümkün değil! İnsanlar, hayvanlar, bitkiler, eşyalar... var olan ne varsa, her şey sonsuz bir başkalaşım olasılığı içindedir belki de...
İtalyan ve dünya edebiyatının en önemli yazarlarından Italo Calvino 1923 yılında Küba'da doğdu. Romanları, hikâyeleri ve denemeleri dünya çapında okundu, sevildi. Çocuklar için de yazdı, ama bütün iyi kitaplar gibi bunlar da her yaştan okura seslenen kitaplar oldu. İkiye Bölünen Vikont, Ağaca Tüneyen Baron, Varolmayan Şövalye bunlara örnek verilebilecek başlıca eserleridir.
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).
His style is not easy to classify; much of his writing has an air reminiscent to that of fantastical fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern". He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."