Summary of The Queen’s Necklace by Italo Calvino

Writer, essayist and journalist, Italo Calvino was born in 1923 in Cuba, of Italian parents. He spent his early years in San Remo, and studied at Turin, where he worked as a publisher. Calvino’s whimsical and imaginative fables made him one of the most important Italian fiction writers in the 20th century. He died in Siena in 1985.

This book contains The Queen’s Necklace and The Workshop Hen.

‘The inspector ordered that the bird be searched. One of the agents stalled saying it made him feel sick, and after some fierce pecking another withdrew sucking a bleeding finger.’

In these two stories from an inventive, comic master of the form, old friends and friendly rivals Pietro and Tommasso discover a treasure lost by the side of the road, and become suspected of abusing a blameless chicken for devious ends. Italo Calvino’s writing explores the fringes of these small, unusual scenes and finds incalculable wisdom and humor there.