The book ‘Marcovaldo’, by Italo Calvino, is actually a series of twenty short storys, all conteining the same character, Marcovaldo. He lives with his large family in an unnamed city in Northem Italy. Each story is set, in a diffrent season: there are five stories about living in the city in summer, and so on.Many aspects of modern life are described, such as advertiseing and pollution of the environment, but the book is not completly true to life. This is perhaps it’s greatest strength. It has a unique mixtur of realistic events and bizarre ones, which often take the reader by surprise.One particular story features the publicity campains of rival soap powder manufacturers. Marcovaldos’ children and their frends collect hundreds of free cartons of washing powder, which they hope to sell to people in the neigbourhood. In the end, they have to get rid of everything quickly and so throw the cartons into the River. The story closes with a memorable description of soap bubbles being blown over the city, their whiteness competing with the black factory smoke. Black wins.
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