pickThe Cloven Viscount begins with a powerful & haunting description of a plague ravaged battlefield in Bohemia in the 17th Century. The following day, during an ill-calculated charge of glory, Viscount Medardo is shot in the abdomen by a cannonball. Medardo's body is found, or at least half of it, & in a particularly gruesome passage he is resurrected while other patients suffering from far minor wounds are neglected & eventually die. Medardo👇
pickAs always, Calvino picks a concept and (pardon the pun) cleaves to it. What‘s delightful about this book is the perfect pace at which he explores the natural consequences of this concept (a man split in half becomes two living halves of one man) in a way that allows him to arrive at an unsurprising end in an unexpected way. Plus, so many quickly drawn characters to give luscious foliage to the journey.
pickThrough a fabulist story, Calvino explores good and evil and what makes us fully human. If we are only good or only evil, he contends, we are incomplete. #readingaroundtheworld #Italy
pickItalo Calvino: the master of the absurd. This was interesting if you like your fiction wacky.
#intranslation
A volte uno si crede incompleto ed è soltanto giovane
The Cloven Viscount | 
2y