Our ancestors : three novels : The cloven viscount ; Baron in the trees ; The non-existent knight

Overview: Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923. He grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. In 1973 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985. *I nostri antenati* (1952/1959) è una trilogia fantastica ed allegorica sull'uomo contemporaneo, costituita dai romanzi *Il visconte dimezzato* (1952), *Il barone rampante* (1957) e *Il cavaliere inesistente* (1959), di Italo Calvino, che prese a modello *l'Orlando furioso* di Ludovico Ariosto. L'autore stesso suggerì di considerare collegati i tre romanzi, quando già tali romanzi erano stati pubblicati e affermati presso critica e pubblico, e difatti ne dispose un'edizione (per la prima volta presso Einaudi nel 1960) con i tre romanzi legati. Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino's classic triptych of moral tales, now published in one volume and all displaying the exuberant talent of a master storyteller. 'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times A triptych of novels in one volume with an introduction by the author. The novels acknowledge debts to a multiplicity of sources, from the troubadours to Voltaire, from the Sicilian puppet theatre to the stories of R.L. Stevenson, and can be interpreted as allegories in an infinity of modes.