If On a Winter's Night a Traveller

✍ Scribed by Italo Calvino

• Book ID: 100407977
• Publisher: Vintage, Penguin Random House
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 175 KB
• Edition: Vintage Books (1998)
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781446414330

✦ Synopsis

{ Oct 2020 - Verified ebook }
Paperback, 260 pages
Published 1979
Vintage Books (1998)
Book Riot 100 Modern Classics (1950-1997)
TheGreatestBooks.org Top 500 Ever |
Translated by: William Weaver
First published in Italy in 1980 under the title Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore
Italo Calvino's masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book's central character.
Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino, of course, are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another - an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.
You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.