Gli animali di Calvino

From Sentiero dei nidi di ragno to Palomar, Italo Calvino never stopped telling stories about animals. But what is the common thread between a colony of Argentinian ants in western Liguria, an albino gorilla in the Barcelona Zoo, a hen in a workshop in Turin, feral cats in an industrial city, and a rabbit that escaped the clutches of vivisectors? A simple answer is that these are all animals that reveal a lot about us humans and how our species has been burdening the Earth to the point of ushering in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. In the stories of these five unlikely-sounding characters, Serenella Iovino follows in Calvino’s footsteps and speaks of an era in which animals are both threatening and threatened and, most importantly, are not that different from us: in fact, we are animals too, we are creatures in a world that calls existing balances into question, including political balances, in this difficult path of co-evolution.