Into the War - Italo Calvino

Category: Historical Fiction, Literature
Language: English
Keywords: Autofiction Italy World War II

Written by Italo Calvino
Read by Edoardo Ballerini
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

“This book deals both with a transition from adolescence into youth and with a move from peace to war: as for very many other people, for the protagonist of this book ‘entry into life’ and ‘entry into war’ coincide.” — from the Author’s Note

These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino’s memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini’s army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades.

The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. One of Calvino’s only works of autobiographical fiction, Into the War offers both a glimpse of this writer’s extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice.

Translated by Martin McLaughlin

February 22 2018
2 hrs and 23 mins