New to Penguin Modern Classics, Calvino’s first novel

Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler’s assistant, both arrogant and insecure who – while the Second World War rages – sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town – particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town’s ‘mattress’. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders’ nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults’ war.