Italo Calvino 15 October 1923 19 September 1985 was an Italian writer and journalist His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy 19521959 the Cosmicomics collection of short stories 1965 and the novels Invisible Cities 1972 and If on a winters night a traveler 1979 Admired in Britain Australia and the United States Calvino was the most translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death He is buried in the garden cemetery of Castiglione della Pescaia in Tuscany Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas a suburb of Havana Cuba in 1923 His father Mario was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture Born 47 years earlier in Sanremo Italy Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture In an autobiographical essay Italo Calvino explained that his father had been in his youth an anarchist a follower of Kropotkin and then a Socialist Reformist In 1917 Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments after living through the Mexican Revolution Calvinos mother Giuliana Luigia Evelina Eva Mameli was a botanist and university professor A native of Sassari in Sardinia and 11 years younger than her husband she married while still a junior lecturer at Pavia University Born into a secular family Eva was a pacifist educated in the religion of civic duty and science Eva gave Calvino his unusual first name to remind him of his Italian heritage although since he wound up growing up in Italy after all Calvino thought his name sounded belligerently nationalist Calvino described his parents as being very different in personality from one another suggesting perhaps deeper tensions behind a comfortable albeit strict middleclass upbringing devoid of conflict As an adolescent he found it hard relating to poverty and the workingclass and was ill at ease with his parents openness to the labourers who filed into his fathers study on Saturdays to receive their weekly paycheck In 1925 less than two years after Calvinos birth the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian coast Calvinos brother Floriano who became a distinguished geologist was born in 1927 Source Article Italo Calvino from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30
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