These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush.

Viewing civilian life as a continuation of the partisan struggle he confirmed his membership of the Italian Communist Party. In 1947 he graduated with a Master's thesis on Joseph Conrad wrote short stories in his spare time and landed a job in the publicity department at the Einaudi publishing house run by Giulio Einaudi. Austere anti-Fascist freethinkers Eva and Mario refused to give their sons any religious education.

Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Lionised in Britain and the United States he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.