Aloysius's review
The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount
by Italo Calvino
Aloysius's review
The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
Aloysius's review
rating:
recommended for: Fans of myth and fairytales
Last night, I finished the first novella in this book, Calvino's The Nonexistent Night, and as Calvino stands among my favorite novelists, I can't say a bad word about it.
The story revolves around a suit of armor with nothing inside except the nonexistent knight of Charlemagne's army, Agilulf, who (dis)embodies chivalric perfection. With tender wit and subtle humor, Cavlino traces the adventures of Agilulf as he travels throughout Europe and North Africa to prove the chastity of a virgin he'd saved to earn his knighthood fifteen years prior after another knight contests that the woman couldn't have been a virgin since she was his mother.
Of course, you can get all of that from reading the back of the book. What you don't get is the ways in which Cavlino pokes fun at the act of war as senseless and futile without being mean or vicious about it (you catch more bees with honey, right?) or the way in which the plot is resolved with a clever Shakespearian twist of mistaken i...more
The story revolves around a suit of armor with nothing inside except the nonexistent knight of Charlemagne's army, Agilulf, who (dis)embodies chivalric perfection. With tender wit and subtle humor, Cavlino traces the adventures of Agilulf as he travels throughout Europe and North Africa to prove the chastity of a virgin he'd saved to earn his knighthood fifteen years prior after another knight contests that the woman couldn't have been a virgin since she was his mother.
Of course, you can get all of that from reading the back of the book. What you don't get is the ways in which Cavlino pokes fun at the act of war as senseless and futile without being mean or vicious about it (you catch more bees with honey, right?) or the way in which the plot is resolved with a clever Shakespearian twist of mistaken i...more
