Calvino's first novel, set in wartime Liguria, follows Pin, a streetwise young boy who lives with his sister and mixes with the adults of his town. After a petty theft he falls in with a band of partisans fighting in the hills. Seen through a child's eyes, the war becomes a strange mixture of adventure, confusion and rough companionship, and Pin has a secret place where spiders build their nests. The book blends realism with a fable-like tone and is an important work of Italian post-war literature about the Resistance.