{"title":"Books by Italo Calvino","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780099430896","title":"If on a Winter's Night a Traveller","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA masterwork by the incomparable, genre-defying, wondrous Italo Calvino. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou go into a bookshop and buy \u003ci\u003eIf on a Winter's Night a Traveller\u003c\/i\u003e by Italo Calvino. You like it. But there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero of them all is you, the reader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Breathtakingly inventive' David Mitchell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A writer of dizzying ambition and variety, each of his stories is a fresh adventure into the possibilities of fiction' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201374027954,"sku":"9780099430896","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099430896.jpg?v=1786011637"},{"product_id":"9780099430865","title":"Our Ancestors","description":"\u003cp\u003eViscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino's classic triptych of moral tales, now published in one volume and all displaying the exuberant talent of a master storyteller.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201379598514,"sku":"9780099430865","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099430865.jpg?v=1786011635"},{"product_id":"9780099428541","title":"Marcovaldo","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMarcovaldo\u003c\/i\u003e is an enchanting collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. Calvino charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disasters with a surrealistic view of city life through the eyes of an outsider. 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As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like \u003ci\u003eInvisible Cities\u003c\/i\u003e, perfectly irrelevant.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a captivating meditation on culture, language, time, memory and the nature of human experience.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'\u003ci\u003eInvisible Cities\u003c\/i\u003e changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose... 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Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?' \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eCosmicomics\u003c\/i\u003e tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of 'cosmic know-it-all' Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a dinosaur, a mollusc, a steamer captain and a moon milk gatherer, among others. This is the first complete edition in English of Italo Calvino's funny, whimsical and delightful stories, which blend scientific fact, flights of fancy, parody and wordplay to show the strangeness and the wonders of the world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino (1923-1985), one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. 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Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwelve enchanting and fantastical stories about the evolution of the universe from the giant of Italian literature, Italo Calvino. His characters - whether human, dinosaur or mollusc - disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms - and have time for a love life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A landmark in fiction, the work of a master' - Ursula K Le Guin\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201676312754,"sku":"9780241573709","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241573709_1f68d11f-76a5-4089-bbbf-aa4822e996ad.jpg?v=1786012407"},{"product_id":"9781784878665","title":"If on a Winter's Night a Traveller","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA beautiful hardback edition of Calvino's genre-switching masterwork. A book of surprise and adventure but you, the reader, are the hero. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou go into a bookshop and buy \u003ci\u003eIf on a Winter's Night a Traveller\u003c\/i\u003e by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Breathtakingly inventive' David Mitchell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A writer of dizzying ambition and variety, each of his stories is a fresh adventure into the possibilities of fiction' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205041127602,"sku":"9781784878665","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784878665_9f6a24ef-5d1a-4d70-b9d8-26556b7e0cff.jpg?v=1786025722"},{"product_id":"9781784874841","title":"Difficult Loves and Other Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eA spectacular display of this key European writer's early work\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as the thirteen tales from his \u003ci\u003eDifficult Loves\u003c\/i\u003e collection this volume also includes 'Smog', 'A Plunge into Real Estate' and 'The Argentine Ant'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the occasional incandescence of vision, and a certain loveable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading' Margaret Atwood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'If this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better' Gore Vidal on 'The Argentine Ant'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205096374450,"sku":"9781784874841","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784874841_6d915246-7825-440a-ade9-42ee59256d79.jpg?v=1786025510"},{"product_id":"9781784878214","title":"Last Comes the Raven","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThese early short stories brim with the beauty of the Italian countryside and seaside, telling tales both sumptuous and unnerving.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCalvino's war-torn Italy is vivid, intense, almost hyper-real. A trio of greedy burglars rob a pastry shop, a boy offers a girl presents of toads and insects from the garden, a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In every story he reveals the hidden meaning beneath the surface of everyday life, and the ludicrousness of war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome stories from \u003ci\u003eLast Comes the Raven\u003c\/i\u003e have been previously available in the collection \u003ci\u003eAdam, One Afternoon\u003c\/i\u003e. 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Based on a witty anaolgy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of same book - IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT by Italo Calvino - are constantly and comically frustrated. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS of our day","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43399071989938,"sku":"9781857151381","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781857151381_667324c6-4aed-4c1e-b013-fd0e3f248f34.jpg?v=1786029475"},{"product_id":"9780099430872","title":"Mr Palomar","description":"\u003cp\u003eMr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is seeking knowledge; 'it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath'. 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In the title story, 'Into the War', we are given an insight into what life was really like for those too young to be conscripted into Mussolini's army, while in 'The Avanguardisti in Menton', Calvino and his friends take a revealingly anti-climactic trip to the garrisoned French town of Menton, the sole Italian conquest of the early months of the conflict. The final story, 'UNPA Nights', is a touching, comic tale of friendship in a blackout, where the narrator's imagination wanders as he roams through the seedier parts of the darkened town instead of guarding the school buildings. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eInto the War\u003c\/i\u003e is Calvino at his autobiographical best, combining brilliantly recollected memory with compelling wit and perfect prose.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224388907381,"sku":"9780141193731","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141193731_10128ef4-4ca4-42f8-9564-3e93b4778b09.jpg?v=1786011768"},{"product_id":"9780141198323","title":"Letters 1941-1985","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe extraordinary letters of Italo Calvino, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, translated into English for the first time by Martin McLaughlin, with an introduction by Michael Wood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino, novelist, literary critic and editor, was also a  masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo  Levi, Gore Vidal and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This collection of his  extraordinary letters, the first in English, gives an illuminating  insight into his work and life. They include correspondence with fellow  authors, generous encouragement to young writers, responses to critics,  thoughts on literary criticism and literature in general, as well as  giving glimpses of Calvino's role in the antifascist Resistance, his  disenchantment with Communism and his travels to America and Cuba.  Together they reveal the searching intellect, clarity and passionate  commitment of a great writer at work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'This  literally marvelous collection of letters shows him to have  been   gregarious, puckish, funny, combative, and, above all, wonderful    company, and opens a new and fascinating perspective on one of the    master writers of the twentieth century. Michael Wood and Martin    McLaughlin have done Calvino, and us, a great and loving service.' 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Calvino is himself clearly captivated by the folkloric imagination and communicates this in what is a fascinating and rich addition to folk literature.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224620675445,"sku":"9780141181349","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141181349_4a08b046-fe0f-4648-bc54-8bd8f9de1104.jpg?v=1786011208"},{"product_id":"9780141190129","title":"Fantastic Tales","description":"From fabulous enchantments and supernatural horrors to subtler, more psychological terrors, the best of nineteenth-century fantastic literature is collected here by Italo Calvino. 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The essays collected here display his fascination with the visual universe, in which the things we see tell a truth about the world. With encyclopedic knowledge and engaging curiosity, Calvino writes about such diverse subjects as the imaginative pleasures of maps, bizarre exhibitions and the earliest forms of written language. Books and paintings provoke discussions of artistic motivation, while descriptions of a meticulous Japanese garden, Trajan's column crumbling to dust or a Mexican temple smothered by the jungle lead to contemplations on space, time and civilization. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSurprising and profound, \u003ci\u003eCollection of Sand\u003c\/i\u003e provides a glimpse into the mind of a master of the magination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. 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He also muses on the social contracts, language and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTranslated from the Italian by Tim Parks\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56225250705781,"sku":"9780141189710","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141189710_673cebe2-a587-4087-9721-3540fcb3cb94.jpg?v=1786011601"},{"product_id":"9780141394923","title":"The Written World and the Unwritten World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'An indispensable writer ... Calvino, possesses the power of seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds and then bringing their dreams to life' Salman Rushdie\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe difference between life and literature; the good intentions of holiday reading; the avante-garde; the fate of the novel; the fantastical; the art of translation: these are just some of the ideas in \u003ci\u003eThe Written World and the Unwritten World\u003c\/i\u003e. A collection of essays, articles, interviews, correspondence, notes and other occasional pieces on writing, reading and interpreting books, this work gives us new insight into Italo Calvino's expansive, curious and generous mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Ann Goldstein\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56225508983157,"sku":"9780141394923","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141394923_ce90c6c6-eabc-4feb-a361-38d4233f6108.jpg?v=1786015721"},{"product_id":"9780241275955","title":"Six Memos for the Next Millennium","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Words connect the visible track to the invisible thing ... like a fragile makeshift bridge cast across the void'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith  imagination and wit, Italo Calvino sought to define the virtues of the  great literature of the past in order to shape the values of the future.  His effervescent last works, left unfinished at his death, were the  Charles Eliot Norton lectures, which he was due to deliver at Harvard in  1985-86. These surviving drafts explore the literary concepts closest  to his heart: Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and  Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth), in serious yet playful  essays that reveal his debt to the comic strip and the folktale. This  collection, now in a fluent and supple new translation, is a brilliant  précis of a great writer whose legacy will endure through the millennium  he addressed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Geoffrey Brock \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The book I give most to people is \u003ci\u003eSix Memos for the Next Millennium'\u003c\/i\u003e Ali Smith\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Wonderful . . . full of wit and erudition' \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56227768729973,"sku":"9780241275955","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241275955_f4bc488c-b430-4254-b967-e198f22097e4.jpg?v=1786012791"},{"product_id":"9780241339107","title":"The Distance of the Moon","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.' \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScience and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful \u003ci\u003eCosmicomic\u003c\/i\u003e short stories.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePenguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56228408983925,"sku":"9780241339107","price":4.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241339107_1588276e-a22f-4fe5-960d-0406b4820371.jpg?v=1786012453"},{"product_id":"9780241472859","title":"The Narrative of Trajan's Column","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e'When the last fire goes out, time too will be finished'\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino was one of the most joyful and imaginative writers of the twentieth century. Here he muses on what the things we leave behind ­- whether waxworks or ancient graffiti, enigmatic maps or a crumbling Roman column - tell us about the greater truths of the world, space and time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56228824646005,"sku":"9780241472859","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241472859_6315cd16-1947-4aec-a1d3-09f35fbf0850.jpg?v=1786012507"},{"product_id":"9780241752371","title":"Under the Jaguar Sun","description":"\u003ci\u003eI went down, I climbed back up into the light of the jaguar sun – into the sea of the green sap of the leaves. 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He walks through paths made from the twisted branches of olive, makes his bed in a holly oak, bathes in a fountain constructed from poplar bark. An aerial library holds the books with which he educates himself in philosophy and mathematics. 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Precariously balanced on his throne, a king is able only to listen to the sounds around him - sure that any deviation from their normal progression would mean the uprising of the conspirators that surround him. And three different men search desperately for the beguiling scents of lost women, from a Count visiting Madame Odile's perfumery, to a London drummer stepping over spent, naked bodies.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311569973621,"sku":"9780141189727","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141189727_0bfff9cf-b8d7-4de9-b58b-cf7686e59e55.jpg?v=1786011602"},{"product_id":"9780141189734","title":"The Path to the Spiders' Nests","description":"\u003cp\u003ePin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. He was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include \u003ci\u003eCosmicomics\u003c\/i\u003e (1968), \u003ci\u003eInvisible Cities\u003c\/i\u003e (1972), and \u003ci\u003eIf on a winter's night a traveler\u003c\/i\u003e (1979). He died in Siena in 1985. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartin L. McLaughlin is Professor of Italian and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of Magdalen College. In addition to his published academic works he is the English translator of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino among many others.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311570006389,"sku":"9780141189734","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141189734_b2aa9f5d-69dd-40b5-b152-b3258f6f859e.jpg?v=1786011603"},{"product_id":"9780141189758","title":"Hermit in Paris","description":"\u003cp\u003eItalo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on the creative work. But this volume of posthumously collected personal writings is the closest we will ever come to the autobiography of this most private of writers. The pieces collected here range from the early 1950s to his last interview, completed just before his sudden death in 1985. Apart from providing a glimpse into his own formative experiences and evolution as an author, Calvino's autobiographical writings also examine the major events of twentieth-century history from a very personal viewpoint. This volume is full of ideas on literature and other writers, all conveyed with the author's distinctive lightness and intelligence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eItalo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include \u003ci\u003eCosmicomics\u003c\/i\u003e (1968), \u003ci\u003eInvisible Cities\u003c\/i\u003e (1972), and \u003ci\u003eIf on a winter's night a traveler\u003c\/i\u003e (1979). 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BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.   ** The perfect stocking filler for short fiction readers**","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369013784949,"sku":"9781529980837","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529980837_aed41709-352f-4dbc-947a-d942f8112fc9.jpg?v=1786023290"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-italo-calvino.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}