Containing short (2-3 page) old folktales, this is a charming collection. Not the type of thing you pick up and read from front to back (nearly 800 pages, 200 stories) more something you would pick up to read one or two before bed or to a child. Not a Calvino novel in the vein of the others of his I've read, but a very worthwhile addition to the bookcase.

Great, fun bedside read.

This collection of over 400 stories from across Italy is by turns funny, delightful, dark, and bizarre. Each is written concisely enough to be read in several minutes but this does not hinder each tale's ability to draw the reader into a world of charms, curses and magical beings. I bought another copy of this for my sister (who is dyslexic) as it's the perfect book for those who love a good story but find reading longer books difficult.

I bought this book in NYC at a lower east side used book store. I was happy to see it was bilingual, but to my surprise, it is Italian and French, not Italian and English. In spite of that, I enjoyed reading the short fables, and at times, even resorted to the French to see what the author wanted me to understand.

Cosa dire di quest'opera? Sicuramente che è molto importante da un punto di vista sociologico-culturale. Ma a me non interessa granché. Quello che importa è che le duecento (!!!) fiabe che compongono questa raccolta dimostrano una grandissima inventiva e fantasia nei particolari, pur seguendo un canovaccio che si può ridurre a pochi tipi diversi. Interessante notare come descrizioni e soluzioni che a prima vista sembrano molto "particolari" si ritrovino quasi identiche in posti e paesi anche molto lontani tra di loro. Un libro consigliato, anche se quando ne avrete lette 150 inizierete un po' a stufarvi: nonostante questo ogni tanto si trovano dei veri e propri capolavori anche verso la fine. Forse, come lettore, avrei preferito che a questo libro ne fosse affiancato un altro con le migliori venti fiabe ampliate e arricchite da Calvino, ma purtroppo non esiste: dobbiamo "accontentarci" di questa pietra miliare che fissa un'istantanea delle nostre campagne, con tutti i pro e i contro che ne derivano, e la rende intellegibile a tutti gli italiani.

We are reading this as a part of our study of Italy. I love the crazy stories, though the overabundance of princesses who need rescuing, or who are 'sold off' to the most worthy prince gets frustrating. Great collection, though, and especially interesting when individual stories are compared to similar tales in other cultures.

Rating for this book is perhaps a function of how quickly one reads it; it is in my case anyway.

I read it over the course of a week and a half at the rate of 50 pages a day. My brain was definitely supersaturated with similar stories long before I finished the 700 pages.

I had this lengthy book for a year before I thought the circumstances right to take it on, and having done so, was determined not to take a year to finish it like many other readers have done.

If you believe the tales, it seems kings and queens are forever having either 3 sons or 3 daughters and it seldom pays to be either of the first two. The third one is always puny but clever, or beautiful beyond words- and both overcome incredible odds to succeed in the end. This usually causes the first two to be jealous and try to kill them, only to end up dead in ingeniously cruel ways themselves.

I can't tell you how many variations on that theme there are in this book, but you'll find there are far too many. Tiresome too these days is the insistence that marriage is the only road to a happy life for women.

While the odd things one reads about when reading a book like this are interesting (Boys, sling a rock and wherever it lands, there will be your bride...) the actions and reactions of folktale characters are often not the way a real person would speak or act even under extraordinary circumstances. This is playing fast and loose with the 'build a fantasy world and act realistically within it' frame.

However, tales such as these can still entertain.

I should note that the author's purpose was not to entertain the masses anyway; it was to make a more or less definitive collection of Italian folktales and he's done that if one judges by the weight of the book alone.

Some of these stories will seem vaguely familiar, which is part of the fun of folktales. The rest of the pleasures come from the sometimes gory, sometimes funny, and, occasionally, happy or satisfying, parts of this remarkably entertaining and weirdly meaningful panorama of multiple narrators making sense of their lives or just passing the lonely hours with a few laughs or thrills. The result is a masterpiece of storytelling at its finest.

Folktales, perhaps more than any other form of story, reflect the nature of the storytellers, their culture, which includes both their serious beliefs and their sense of humor. I read these stories and heard the voices, the accents, the tonal inflections, the winking chuckles and the squint-eyed warnings of my Italian family. Lessons taught the best way lessons can be taught, through song and story. This is a book to be read and re-read. Thank you, Il Signore Calvino.

ترجمه عالی و نثر دقیق و شیوای ایتالو کالوینو از نقاط قوت این اثر هستند . به طوری که شما با خواندن این افسانه ها به این شک می افتید که آیا این نوشته ها و داستان ها طنز های ساخته ذهن کالوینو هستند یا نه واقعن افسانه های محلی ایتالیایی ؟

200 fiabe popolari raccolte, tradotte dai vari dialetti e rielaborate, in alcuni punti, da Calvino, per sopperire alle lacune e all'indeterminatezza che la narrazione orale inevitabilmente comporta. Il tutto, sempre nel rispetto dello spirito popolare della Fiaba che tanto ha affascinato il futuro autore delle "Città invisibili".
Un libro utile per introdurre i bambini alla lettura, quasi un dovere per gli amanti del genere, interessante e divertente per chi affronta il libro "per diletto".
Di Calvino anche l'introduzione e le note ad ogni fiaba.

These fairy tales were very enjoyable. Not too surprisingly, there was some repetition - different regions of Italy having various versions of basically the same story - but that didn't bother me. It was interesting to see a few tales that were clearly variations of Homer!