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The Cloven Viscount
The Cloven Viscount | Italo Calvino
6 posts | 29 read | 6 to read
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there’s no telling the lengths each will go to win.Now available in an independent volume for the first time, this deliciously bizarre novella is Calvino at his most devious and winning.
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Christoffer
The Cloven Viscount | Italo Calvino
Pickpick

As always, Calvino picks a concept and (pardon the pun) cleaves to it. What‘s delightful about this book is the perfect pace at which he explores the natural consequences of this concept (a man split in half becomes two living halves of one man) in a way that allows him to arrive at an unsurprising end in an unexpected way. Plus, so many quickly drawn characters to give luscious foliage to the journey.

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Louise
The Cloven Viscount | Italo Calvino
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Pickpick

Through a fabulist story, Calvino explores good and evil and what makes us fully human. If we are only good or only evil, he contends, we are incomplete. #readingaroundtheworld #Italy

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Nafiza
The Cloven Viscount | Italo Calvino
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Pickpick

Italo Calvino: the master of the absurd. This was interesting if you like your fiction wacky.

#intranslation

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Laragazzadagliocchidighiaccio
Il visconte dimezzato | Italo Calvino

A volte uno si crede incompleto ed è soltanto giovane

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Anissa
Il visconte dimezzato | Italo Calvino

"Alle volte uno si crede incompleto, ed è soltanto giovane"