At ten past three the phone rang. 'Pronto,' I said, and the voice answered: 'I am Signor Calvino.' It was the novelist Italo Calvino; I was due to interview him later that afternoon. We had scarcely agreed on the place when something hard hit me on the back of the head. The room spun; there was a glare of light. Calvino assumed it was a bad connection.

LRB 14 April 2011 | PDF Download