What are Calvino's Italian Folktales, and are they for adults?

In 1954 Calvino, already an established novelist, took on a job that sounds like homework and turned into one of his most loved books. The result, published by Einaudi in November 1956, carries a wonderfully long Italian subtitle explaining that the tales were collected from popular tradition over the previous hundred years and transcribed from the various dialects. That subtitle is the whole method in one line.

Where the tales came from

Calvino did not go out with a notebook and sit by village fires. According to Wikipedia's account of the collection, he worked from the existing collections of folklorists, picked one version of each tale, and noted its source, while warning that it was simply the version he chose. He was influenced by Vladimir Propp's study of how folk tales are built, and his model was Giovan Francesco Straparola, the sixteenth-century writer whose collection put fairy tales in front of a general reading public.

The book is organised roughly by geography, starting on the Ligurian coast and in Piedmont and working south through the Veneto, Tuscany and Rome to Calabria and Sicily. The Italian Wikipedia entry notes that only two regions, the Aosta Valley and Umbria, are missing.

What Calvino did to them

He translated the tales out of dialect into a clean, quick Italian, and he tidied them: trimming, joining variants, sometimes renaming characters. Crucially, he confessed to all of it. The notes at the back explain his choices, tale by tale. One example the Wikipedia article gives: for the Italian Snow White he chose a version with robbers rather than the ones with dwarfs, which he suspected had come down from Germany.

That makes the book two things at once: a story collection and a quiet essay on how stories travel and change. If you like Calvino the novelist, this is where you can watch him learn some of his tricks. Our guide on where to start with Italo Calvino places it among his other books.

So are they for adults?

Yes, and arguably more than for children. These are not the softened bedtime versions. Kings are vain, witches are busy, clever peasants outwit their betters, and nobody explains anything twice. The tales are short, often a few pages, and move at the speed of something told aloud. The humour is dry and the logic is dream logic: a girl is sold in a basket of pears, a man is wreathed in seaweed, a young hero cannot be frightened by anything at all.

You will also meet familiar plots in local dress. The Italian Wikipedia entry lists regional versions of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood, plus echoes of Greek myth, including a Polyphemus-like giant.

How to dip in

• Don't read it front to back in a week. It is a long book. Treat it like a pantry, not a meal.
• Read by region. Before a holiday in Sicily or Venice, read the tales from there. It is a better guide to local humour than most guidebooks.
• Read one aloud. They were made for voices. Two or three tales make a good end to a long dinner.
• Read the notes afterwards, not before, so the story lands first and the backstage tour comes second.