The Path to the Spiders' Nests

First edition thus. 8vo. Pp. [iv], 185. Red cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Author's first English-language book, originally published by Collins in 1956. Preceded by its Italian edition published by Einaudi Editore, Turin, in 1947 under the title Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun and revised by Martin McLaughlin to incorporate changes to Calvino's definitive Italian edition, previously censored passages, and his newly translated, unabridged Preface, in which the author critiques and places into historical context his youthful work.

Told in the first person, a coming-of-age story of "a gutter boy's search for an ideal among the Italian partisans." Inspired by the author's wartime experiences as a resistance fighter against the puppet Salò regime and the Axis powers, from which he emerged a committed anti-fascist intellectual. Winner of the inaugural Riccione Prize, its sales topped a surprising 5000 copies for a virtually unknown writer and kicked off Calvino's neorealist period. Honoured by the Légion d'Honneur in 1981.

"The preface is a remarkable piece of writing, a long, revealing, unquiet essay in intellectual autobiography, which should prove as rewarding to new readers as the spirited tale of the novel itself. (...) Calvino now has the status of a contemporary classic, devotedly studied and comprehensively admired." –Times Literary Supplement