To read the version revised by Calvino, as well as Calvino's revealing 1964 preface, see The Path to the Spiders' Nests, published in 1998 by Ecco Press. Also, either the translator or the publishers of the first English edition (1956) also altered or removed certain passages considered unsuitable for the sexual and political climate of the 1950s. Later, Calvino describes Path as 'the book of a very young man.' The novel continues to fascinate, in part because the revised Italian editions of 19 were altered by Calvino. That same year he wins the Premio Riccione. It is published in 1947 and sells 6,000 copies, an unusually high number at that time. It is the story of a boy from the slums who joins the partisans. He writes Sentiero dei nidi di ragno ( The Path to the Nest of Spiders) in twenty days during December of 1946. At Einaudi he develops friendships with Pavese, Vittorini, and Natalia Ginzburg, as well as with historians such as Franco Venturi and philosophers such as Norberto Bobbio and Felice Balbo

Here he meets Cesare Pavese and Vittorini, two neo-realist writers who share literary ideas with Calvino and introduce him to Leftist politics. He collaborates on the weekly Il Politecnico (directed by Elio Vittorini) and on the newspaper L'Unita and joins the editorial staff of the publishing house Einaudi. Graduates from the University with a thesis on Joseph Conrad. Calvino was later to write that it was during this time that he came to know the art of story-telling, when the partisans would recount their latest escapades over the campfire.Д«ecomes a member of the Italian Communist Party ( Partido Comunista Italiano, PCI ).ДЄfter the liberation, he settles in Turin where he studies Literature at the University. Starts studying agronomy at the University of Turin, where his father was professor of Tropical Agriculture.Дuring the German occupation, Calvino joins the Italian Resistance and fights the Germans in the Ligurian mountains as a member of the Garibaldi Brigades. He remains in San Remo for twenty years.ДЄs a compulsory member of the Young Fascists, Calvino participates in the Italian occupation of the French Riviera. As a child, he prefers reading novels and poetry to the scientific studies his parents wish him to pursue. Calvino spends his childhood on an estate abounding in exotic trees and plants, in the woods of the Maritime Alps, and on the rocks of the Italian Riviera.

In 1927 his brother Floriano, a future geologist of international acclaim and prefect of the University of Genova, is born. In 1925 the family moves to San Remo, on the Italian Riviera, where Mario Calvino is curator of the botanical gardens. Italo Calvino born in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, to Mario Calvino, botanist and agronomist, and Evelina Mameli, professor of botany.

Orlando furioso italo calvino