Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 - 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). Admired in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.