Marcovaldo: or, The Seasons in the City »

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams-but the results are never the expected ones. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Anatole Broyard

''Marcovaldo'' reads like an attempt to satisfy both schools of thought....It leans almost entirely on irony, but of a rather bland or schematic kind. One feels, in reading the book, a sort of fatigue in regard to irony, like the fatigue some of us felt with novels about sex in the 60's....Mr. Calvino invents, but he does not persevere. -- New York Times