Nuestros antepasados

"I collect in this volume three stories that I wrote in the fifties to sixties and which have in common the fact that they are implausible and that they occur in remote times and in imaginary countries. Given these common characteristics, and despite other non-homogeneous characteristics, they are thought to constitute what is usually called a "cycle", rather, a "closed cycle" (that is, finished, as I have no intention of writing others) . It is a good opportunity that presents itself to me to read them again and try to answer questions that until now I had eluded each time I had asked myself: why have I written these stories? What was I trying to say? What did I actually say? What is the meaning of this type of narrative in the context of current literature? [...] I wanted to do a trilogy of experiences on how to realize oneself as human beings. I wish they could be seen as a genealogical tree of the ancestors of contemporary man, in which each face hides some feature of the people around us, of you, of myself." Italo Calvino, June 1960.