Italo Calvino 
Difficult Loves 

The author of Invisible Cities explores love and war “with enormous realist dignity” in this collection of “wondrous work from [his] early career” (Kirkus, starred review).   In this short story collection, one of Italy’s greatest storytellers explores the interior lives of characters just as their most cherished illusions of love are suddenly swept away. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady’s bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom.   Confronted with a jarring moment of recognition, each of these characters discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. This is the first edition in English to present these fifteen short stories together as Calvino originally envisioned them. It also includes two stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein.