Marco Valdo or the seasons in the city

Author's name: Italo Calvino Publisher: Dar Al-Mada for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2019 Literary classification: Stories Brief about the book: In short stories, the writer takes us on a journey with Marco Valdo, a simple worker who longs for life in nature and expects his simplicity and naivety in humorous situations, but they show the extent of the brutal industrial aggression on nature and the misery of modern man who lives under this concrete nightmare pressing on his chest. In this collection of stories by the Italian writer "Italo Calvino," there are twenty different stories, with a single hero, "Marco Valdo," and they are interconnected and separate stories, united by their hero and the place of occurrence in one of the small Italian towns. We can categorize this collection under "black comedy stories," as it depicts the life of poverty experienced by a large segment of Italians after World War II, and the class differences during that period. It also portrays with his pen the cheerful spirit that the hero of his stories possessed despite his and his family's suffering from poverty and need. What is notable in this collection is that each story is divided into a season, around which the events of each story and others revolve.