Into the War

July 28, 2014
Sixty years after its original publication in Italy, Calvino’s trio of war stories has been translated for the first time into English. The line between fiction and autobiography is decidedly blurred in the character of the unnamed, first-person narrator. A lengthy translator’s note draws parallels to the author’s life. The book also includes a previously unpublished note by Calvino that provides further
contextualization. The title story, set in 1940, about Italy’s entry into WWII, is both nostalgic and ominous. On vacation from school, the narrator and his friend Jerry want to visit the beach, where they hope to get lucky with a haughty blonde beauty. The city is flooded with refugees, and Fascist Party members are viewed as saviors. The story concludes with a random sighting of Mussolini. “The Avanguardisti in Menton” is set a few months later, and there’s a larger military presence: the small French town of Menton is now a new Italian border post, which is visited by the narrator and his Fascist friend Biancone. “UNPA Nights” describes the teenage narrator’s first night away from home, at his once-a-week night watchman post for the Italian Anti-Aircraft Corps. Calvino is a supreme storyteller, writing with ease and transparency that make the reader a confidante.

September 15, 2014
Though Italian writer Calvino died in 1985, his popularity and influence are undiminished. This set of three linked stories was one of his first published works, and it is emphatically not juvenilia. Unlike his later fabulist fiction, it reads like a treatment of Italian neorealist cinema. In his excellent introduction, translator McLaughlin shows how certain autobiographical themes recur in Calvino's work. For this reason alone, Into the War is a valuable addition to Calvino's canon. In an unpublished note found among his papers and reproduced in this book, Calvino is explicit about his themes: for the protagonist of this book entry into life' and entry into war' coincide. The longest story, The Avanguardisti in Menton, is a profound meditation on the dual meaning of the word occupation employment and the dirty business of a conquering army looting a conquered city.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)