#Spooktober 22: The Silver Nose

October 22, 2022

Famed Italian author Italo Calvino, an author some intellectuals fiercely insist he never wrote fantasy or science fiction way beyond the point of the ridiculous, collected and translated 200 folktales from around the Country and published them in a vastly underrated book.

Among them, some tales will sound familiar and were already presented by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone, only to become famous because of Perrault or the Grimm Bros: there’s Beauty and the Beast (Bellinda and the Monster from Tuscany), Cinderella (Grattula Beddattula from Sicily), Snow White (La Bella Venezia, literally Beautiful Venice from Abruzzo), Sleeping Beauty (Sleeping Beauty and her children from Calabria), and Bluebeard (The Silver Nose from Pedimont).

Today I bring you the last one: it features the Devil, laundry and a very clever girl.

The illustration in the header comes from the fantastic project by Rebecca Yanovskaya, who illustrated the horror tabletop RolePlaying Game Bluebeard’s Wife for Magpie Games. You can see her work here.

You can read the rest on my Patreon.

comics and illustration

Leo Ortolani, Tapum

A un certo punto ci sarà una battuta, in questo fumetto, e riderete. Sappiate che è l’unica. Com’è giusto che sia. Se devo paragonare quest’opera a qualcosa, il confronto più azzeccato è probabilmente lo spettacolo che Marco Paolini trasse dal Sergente nella neve di Rigoni

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Summertime

Omeros in the Caribbeans

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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books and literature

Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch

I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

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