This is my second time reading this novel. I first read it over twenty five years. I picked up a French copy at a used booked store when I was in Europe. So it’s been a while since I’ve read it.
This time I had an English copy that I read to my son. It didn’t always keep his attention rapt but there is one scene in the book where he had a visceral reaction. After the bandit Gian dei Brughi becomes addicted to books he no longer wants to be a bandit any longer. Two other bandits blackmail him into doing another dirty deed by stealing a book and ripping pages out of it. Every time a page was ripped from the book in the story my son screamed in agony. You would have thought that I was ripping out the last pages in the book that we were reading. This is why I keep coming back to Italo Calvino novels, he was a master storyteller.