New book of letters

Princeton University Press is publishing a book of letters written by the late Italian journalist Italo Calvino. "Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985" features his letters, as selected by Michael Wood, who also wrote the introduction. They were translated into English by Martin McLaughlin.

According to the publicity on the Princeton University Press website:

"The letters are filled with insights about Calvino's writing and that of others; about Italian, American, English, and French literature; about literary criticism and literature in general; and about culture and politics. The book also provides a kind of autobiography, documenting Calvino's Communism and his resignation from the party in 1957, his eye-opening trip to the United States in 1959-60, his move to Paris (where he lived from 1967 to 1980), and his trip to his birthplace in Cuba (where he met Che Guevara). Some lengthy letters amount almost to critical essays, while one is an appropriately brief defense of brevity, and there is an even shorter, reassuring note to his parents written on a scrap of paper while he and his brother were in hiding during the antifascist Resistance.
This is a book that will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone else interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work."

You can also read excerpts from the book on The New Yorker website. There are at least a couple of segments posted on the Page-Turner section so far.