In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past,
remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession
with the cinema and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the
Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language and sensations
associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if
asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself
are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.