This story from Italo Calvino starts off aslike a horror story. A young couple with a baby move to a peaceful seaside village looking for work, only to discover that the whole place is crawling with ants. After they find the baby covered in ants and their food destroyed, Calvino takes a playful turn. He goes on to describe the sometimes farcical ways villagers try to exterminate and/or pretend they are not affected by the invaders, and the couple’s embarrassing confrontation with the reportedly self-serving government “Ant Man”. Themes: co-existing with nature, powerlessness, futility, tolerance/accepting the inevitable, mob hysteria.
An interesting aspect of the story is that Calvino claimed this is the most realistic story I have written in my life; it describes with absolute exactness the situation that came about because of the invasion of the Argentine ants into the cultivated areas of San Remo and a large swathe of the Western Riviera di Ponente during my childhood, in the twenties and thirties. Ironically, it has been suggested but never proven that Calvino’s father , a Professor of Agriculture who imported tropical fruit and flower samples into the area, may have unintentionally been responsible for the infestation. (source)
Original Text / PDF (13,000 words)