{"product_id":"last-comes-the-raven-and-other-stories-isbn-9780544146709","title":"Last Comes The Raven: And Other Stories","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eThe first complete English-language edition of one of Calvino’s important early short story collections\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection—one of Calvino’s earliest—take place in a World War II–era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In the title story, a compact masterpiece of shifting perspectives, a panicked soldier tries to keep his wits—and his life—when he faces off against a young partisan with a loaded rifle and miraculous aim. Throughout, Calvino delights in discovering hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Stories from\u003cem\u003e Last Comes the Raven\u003c\/em\u003e have been published in translation, but the collection as a whole has never appeared in English. This volume, including several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein, is an important addition to Calvino’s legacy. | \u003cp\u003e\"In \u003cem\u003eLast Comes the Raven\u003c\/em\u003e, a collection of early stories, we find the man behind the magician .  . . Calvino was drawn to narratives as pure and potent objects; in this collection, he examines but does not deconstruct them . . . There is the author’s trademark ironic distance and careful wit, as well as tinges of surrealism. But, where the mature Calvino found a style that was supremely arch, alien, and spare, his more mimetic stories retain the funk of the human . . . The reader of \u003cem\u003eLast Comes the Raven\u003c\/em\u003e registers a bloom of social feelings: sympathy, recognition, curiosity.\" \u003cstrong\u003e—Katy Waldman, \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mariner Books Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890011402469,"sku":"NP9780544146709","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780544146709.jpg?v=1730232371","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/last-comes-the-raven-and-other-stories-isbn-9780544146709","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}