If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Description
In this ingenious experimental novel, Italo Calvino invites you to become the protagonist—a Reader searching for a complete book that keeps eluding him through a series of corrupted copies and mistaken identities. As you navigate through ten interwoven narrative pastiches spanning genres from espionage to mystery, you'll encounter another Reader, Ludmilla, and together you'll grapple with the fundamental questions of how we read, create meaning, and connect with others. Calvino masterfully weaves explorations of reading's solitary nature with a romantic comedy about two people trying to reach each other across the pages, blending metafictional playfulness with profound meditation on desire and interpretation. The result is a dazzling, vertiginous work that celebrates the transformative power of narrative while questioning the very nature of storytelling itself. This is a novel that doesn't just tell a story—it makes you an active participant in the act of reading itself.
Available Editions
paperback
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Published Jan 1, 2012
276 pages
ISBN: 9780544133402
Reviews
1 rating
Community Reviews(1)
This book could so easily have been great. It’s so creative and interesting and unique. Has some of the greatest musings on reading I have read … and yet it’s so fucking obnoxious. Too obnoxious for its own good. <br/><br/>I felt like the book was screaming at me, “Reader, you are too stupid to be a Reader. You may read as a reader, but to be a Reader like described in this book you are simply too stupid! This sentence shall ramble on half the page so you lose the point it makes and reminded again you are stupid!” <br/><br/>On another note, every single woman in this book is a sex object. Every woman, regardless of age or race or whatever, is described through the lens of their fuckability. I think it tries to be self aware about this at the end, but I was so exhausted at all of these women being objectified and sexualised that I was too fatigued to absorb any point. I have never read so many obscenely detailed descriptions of breasts in my life — and I read fairy porn. <br/><br/>This could’ve been so good. It was just infuriating instead.
Details
First Published
1982
Language
eng
Translation
Original: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
From: ita
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Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.