Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno

195x132 mm. 209, [3] pp. Publisher's paperback with a color illustration by Ennio Morlotti (spine slightly faded). From the “I Coralli” series. An excellent copy. First edition of Italo Calvino's debut novel. Written in December 1946, it was rejected for the Mondadori Prize but went on to win the 1947 Riccione Prize. Published thanks to the support of Cesare Pavese, it achieved moderate commercial success. It is a neorealist novel about the Resistance, set in the valleys and woods of the western Ligurian Riviera, whose protagonist is a ten-year-old boy who has lost both parents. The unprecedented “bottom-up” perspective on that violent and turbulent world, seen through the eyes of someone who cannot yet clearly distinguish good from evil, represents an absolute novelty in the Italian literary landscape.

[14876]