Marco Valdo

Reincarnation throughout the year, one season and one story

Looking up at the stars in the ditch The wonder and joy of the city in the eyes of a small worker

Marco Valdo is a city laborer. In the urban forest full of concrete and asphalt, he tried to find nature. The mushrooms emerging from the flower beds in spring and the migratory birds over the city in autumn can make his gray and poor world colorful and fertile. He has a pair of keen and sensitive eyes, always capturing the changes of the seasons and the secrets of the city. For him, "there's something to look forward to in life beyond an hourly salary, additional wage subsidies and family allowances."

The long-awaited "Marco Valdo", which has been published for the first time in simplified Chinese, is a milestone work in Calvino's creative career, opening up his golden age of creation. Calvino's observation and thinking about urban life in this series of stories laid a solid foundation for his later masterpiece "Invisible Cities". After experiencing the little misfortunes and joys of Marcovaldo style, Calvino took this as the last love poem dedicated to the city at the moment when it is becoming more and more difficult to live the city as a city.