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. (20020220)
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller (Vintage Classics)
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Review
"Breathtakingly inventive" (David Mitchell )
"The greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century" (Guardian )
"Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before.This is highly unnerving: fortunately you're usually too busy laughing to go mad... I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends" (Salman Rushdie )
"A devastating, wonderfully ingenious parody of all those dreary best-sellers you buy at the airport... It is a "world novel": take it with you next time you plan to travel in an armchair" (Lorna Sage Observer )
"A brilliant work of the imagination and the intellect working in union.And, by the way, it's very funny also" (Scotsman )
"The greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century" (Guardian )
"Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before.This is highly unnerving: fortunately you're usually too busy laughing to go mad... I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends" (Salman Rushdie )
"A devastating, wonderfully ingenious parody of all those dreary best-sellers you buy at the airport... It is a "world novel": take it with you next time you plan to travel in an armchair" (Lorna Sage Observer )
"A brilliant work of the imagination and the intellect working in union.And, by the way, it's very funny also" (Scotsman )
Book Description
'Breathtakingly inventive' David Mitchell (20020220)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
84 of 85 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One definition of metafiction is "Fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with the writing of fiction or its conventions." That could pretty much describe Italo Calvino's "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler," a gloriously surreal story about the hunt for a mysterious book.
A reader opens Italo Calvino's latest novel, "If On A Winter's Night A Traveller," only to have the story cut short. Turns out it was a defective copy, with another book's pages inside. But as the reader tries to find out what book the defective pages belong to, he keeps running into even more books and more difficulties -- as well as the beautiful Ludmilla, a fellow reader who also received a defective book.
With Ludmilla assisting him (and, he hopes, going to date him), the reader then explores obscure dead languages, publishers' shops, bizarre translators and various other obstacles. All he wants is to read an intriguing book. But he keeps stumbling into tales of murder and sorrow, annoying professors, and the occasional radical feminist -- and a strange literary conspiracy. Will he ever finish the book?
In its own way, "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" is a mystery story, a satire, a romance, and a treasure hunt. Any book whose first chapter explains how you're supposed to read it has got to be a winner -- "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, "If On A Winter's Night a Traveler." Relax. Concentrate." And so on, with Calvino gently joking and chiding the reader before actually beginning his strange little tale.
As cute as that first chapter is, it also sets the tone for this strange, funny metafictional tale, which not only inserts Calvino but the reader.
... Read more ›36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
By Anapaest
Format:Paperback
I bought this book having seen it mentioned in various lists for 'Greatest Books of the 20th Century'. If you are a fan of the post-modernist novel then this should please you as it plays with the structure of the novel and with ideas of literary conventions in a very smart way. Calvino was clearly ahead of his time because authors like Peter Carey have clearly borrowed the convention in books examining the act of writing books. If you are a real literary 'nut' or member of the post-modernist cognoscenti then you should enjoy the way that the book leads you along various twists and turns, forensically examining the nature of writing and the fallacy of the novel.
I personally found the book to be a little too clever and I never felt drawn into the self-referential world that is created by the central quest of the book. I greatly admire the intellectual trapeze act, but was left feeling a little cold.
I personally found the book to be a little too clever and I never felt drawn into the self-referential world that is created by the central quest of the book. I greatly admire the intellectual trapeze act, but was left feeling a little cold.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mark Nicholls's review of Italo Calvino's cult postmodern classic "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller"
21 Nov 2009
Format:Paperback
You are about to read Mark Nicholls's review of Italo Calvino's postmodern classic If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. You might want to position yourself in a comfortable chair before you begin, or place a cushion behind your back, as we know how arduous it can be to read things off the internet. You might also care to prepare a coffee, a light snack, or to switch a light on before beginning.
You might be thinking that this blog post is not going to interest you, since book reviews on books you haven't read can often be frustrating. For starters, the writer delves into details about the plot which spoil the surprises a blind reading of the book might create, and likewise you are unable to form an opinion yourself and share your thoughts on the text in question.
Conversely, you might have read the text and are familiar with the second person narration that addresses the reader directly and places them as a protagonist in the book. You might think this review an obvious imitation of Calvino's unique style, and become irate as you read on, wondering when the reviewer is going to get around to summarising the plot.
In fact, you become so irate, you search for the book on Goodreads, but are incandescent when you notice each review is also written in the same imitative style, and the gimmick becomes so irritating you have to leave the room for a moment to calm yourself down.
As you leave the room, someone knocks on the door. It is a door-to-door salesman offering copies of Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveller at a reduced price.... Read more ›
You might be thinking that this blog post is not going to interest you, since book reviews on books you haven't read can often be frustrating. For starters, the writer delves into details about the plot which spoil the surprises a blind reading of the book might create, and likewise you are unable to form an opinion yourself and share your thoughts on the text in question.
Conversely, you might have read the text and are familiar with the second person narration that addresses the reader directly and places them as a protagonist in the book. You might think this review an obvious imitation of Calvino's unique style, and become irate as you read on, wondering when the reviewer is going to get around to summarising the plot.
In fact, you become so irate, you search for the book on Goodreads, but are incandescent when you notice each review is also written in the same imitative style, and the gimmick becomes so irritating you have to leave the room for a moment to calm yourself down.
As you leave the room, someone knocks on the door. It is a door-to-door salesman offering copies of Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveller at a reduced price.... Read more ›
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
By J. Skade
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
Calvino once described a young readers first acquaintance with Stendhal's 'Charterhouse at Parma' and how they are overwhelmed by the first pages recognising the novel they had always wanted to read; how the novel then develops along different lines becoming a multiplicity of novels. He could have been describing this novel. The reader is immediately arrested by the opening chapter in which 'the reader' buys a copy of 'If On A Winters Night A Traveller' by Italo Calvino. The whole description is more engaging and a lot funnier than you might think. The chapter seems to herald a whole new kind of novel. The remainder of the novel follows a number of different directions, but it is the first chapter which remains in the mind most clearly.
It is a novel about novels - usually the most tedious of postmodernist cliches, yet this novel centres on reading rather than writing. The unnamed reader begins a number of novels which for increasingly bizarre reasons he is unable to continue. He meets a fellow reader, Ludmilla with whom he joins in the quest to find these lost novels and with whom he begins a romance. On his quest he encounters publishers and academics a literary forger, censors - in fact pretty much every element of the literature industry ( including a non-reader who uses books to create sculptures), yet he remains the pure disinterested reader.
The book is packed tight with ideas and jokes plus some marvellous literary pastiches - my favourite being the erotic japanese novel.
Calvino belongs to the worlds of Sterne and Joyce and in this case more particularly Borges and Flann O'Brien. It is the perfect book for those who love experiment, playfulness and cerebral humour. It is probably the best introduction to a marvellous (in all senses) writer.
It is a novel about novels - usually the most tedious of postmodernist cliches, yet this novel centres on reading rather than writing. The unnamed reader begins a number of novels which for increasingly bizarre reasons he is unable to continue. He meets a fellow reader, Ludmilla with whom he joins in the quest to find these lost novels and with whom he begins a romance. On his quest he encounters publishers and academics a literary forger, censors - in fact pretty much every element of the literature industry ( including a non-reader who uses books to create sculptures), yet he remains the pure disinterested reader.
The book is packed tight with ideas and jokes plus some marvellous literary pastiches - my favourite being the erotic japanese novel.
Calvino belongs to the worlds of Sterne and Joyce and in this case more particularly Borges and Flann O'Brien. It is the perfect book for those who love experiment, playfulness and cerebral humour. It is probably the best introduction to a marvellous (in all senses) writer.
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3.6 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly engaging and thought-provoking
Italo Calvino is one of those writers who gently tugs you through the book like the soft smell of a delicious meal wafting through the house, or a gentle tug of a summer breeze... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Yaya
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, but not one for traditionalists
It's easy to see why there are a lot of conflicting reviews for this book!
Calvino's (to my mind) masterpiece of postmodern meta-fiction will most certainly not be to... Read more
Calvino's (to my mind) masterpiece of postmodern meta-fiction will most certainly not be to... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mike N
2.0 out of 5 stars
A difficult read
Written in a self-consciously difficult and convoluted style, this is a rather dated, occasionally sexist and ultimately unsatisfactory work which doesn't seem to live up to its... Read more
Published 2 months ago by David Mansel Bunford
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not exactly A.S. Byatt.
It's definitely an intelligent read, but the plot is very strange indeed. The author writes about books you cannot put down, or something along those lines, this is definitely not... Read more
Published 2 months ago by R
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic.
Italy's best writer to never have received a Nobel price. A book for book-nerds. Great looking edition, the Vintage Classics. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Minutkasquare
5.0 out of 5 stars
Calvino is too one of my favourite authors
I love Italo Calvino, in general, and this book was not a disappointment, either... Though not perhaps of the same range as 'Invisible cities'...- Y.-P.H.
Published 3 months ago by Hayrynen Yrjo-paavo
4.0 out of 5 stars
A different kind of novel
If you are interested in the art of writing a novel and its infinite variations give this book a read
Published 4 months ago by SACB
1.0 out of 5 stars
Oh dear...
My wife asked me to read this, having got this book for her book club. She wanted a second opinion on it. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Andy Mcnish
4.0 out of 5 stars
nostalgia.
Bought for me 30 years ago, it remained unfinished (a bit like the novels within this one). I'm glad I've read it now.
Published 5 months ago by M. W. Craig
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent writing
I had some doubts about this during the first 50 pages. I thought it might be one of those books which attempts to play out a dry (probably French) philosophy in dull experiments... Read more
Published 6 months ago by C. Young
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