Italo Calvino

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.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

If on a winter's night a traveler

Novel Ideas

 If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few ines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it.

Long novels today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years. 

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver 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 TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book--IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER, 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.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Esmée Mangoensoewito

With the revolution, there are people who change so much they become inrecognizable, and other people who feel they are the same selves as before. It must be a sign that they were prepared in advance for the new times.

“i am looking for Mr. Kauderer,” I said to him. He answered, “Mr. Kauderer is not here. But since the cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in.”

I realize that for a long time I have tended to reduce the presence of darkness in my life. The doctors' prohibition of going out after sunset has confined me for months within the boundaries of the daytime world. But this is not all: the fact is that I find in the day's light, in this diffused, pale, almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night’s.

You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything.

Se Una Notte D'Inverno UN Viaggiatore

Veronica Palmieri

Ten different and thoroughly dissimilar novels intertwine as the beginning of each book, interrupted at a critical moment of suspense, leads into yet another novel reflecting yet another literary mode

Alishba Ali

Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore

Valeria Giuliani

At the end of the day I didn’t enjoy this book too much, but it did play with the form in some pretty fun ways, and is sort of the ultimate book about books. Why we read, how we read, what reading feels like, the experience of reading in a very broad sense. The last couple chapters especially. 

Gabe Cortez

oh this was such a treat! calvino's literal virtuosism, the humour, the absurdism... this is such a difficult book to review, because every word i type is a limitation to its sheer genius. you'll have to read it to understand what i mean, but believe me when i say it's truly one of a kind.

loved at the beginning lost me in the middle but by the end i was like wait this fucks. i think a fun writing exercise for the madman and a fun reading exercise for me

yasi

Ned Summers 

Very clever and interesting book. Entirely different from anything I've ever read before, though I'm sure it would be even better in Italian.

Virginia L

A volte ero tentata a guardare fuori dal finestrino

Tao Oat

really wasn’t speaking to me — somewhat frustrating to read, which i think is kind of the point — so when it got too male-gazey near the end i dropped it.

Erfan Abedi

من قشنگ داشتم فضای بارش فکری رو می‌دیدم؛ و خب، بارش فکری‌های خودم برام جالب‌ترن.
کسی که این رو به من معرّفی کرد، گفت «پست مدرنیسم»‌ه و از این‌حرفا؛ انسجام که نداشت، موضوع داستانی مشخّص که نداشت، همه‌ش هم فکر می‌کرد که می‌دونه من به چی فکر می‌کنم ولی نمی‌دونست. [و این خیلی روی اعصاب بود]
مثلاً از کل خصوصیات یه‌زنِ توی یه‌بار، فقط شکل کمربندِ پالتوش رو توصیف کرده؛ خط بعد این‌ه که: «من می‌دونم که می‌خوای بدونی چه‌شکلی‌ه.»؛ در حالی که من اصلاً به این‌موضوع فکر نمی‌کردم.
و وقتی رفتم این‌چیزها رو به اون‌فرد می‌گم، می‌گه که توی ساختارهای قدیمی گیر کردی و نمی‌تونی ساختارهای جدید رو بپذیری، انصافاً این‌طوری هم نیست که هر نوشته‌ای که منسجم نبود/هرچی رو بگم بَده، ولی دیگه بارش فکری آخه؟ :/

John-Paul Teti

The gimmick, somehow, doesn’t wear off. A delight.

Christopher McCaffery

Stephen Pieper

Put aside until I can give it more attention. 

Helene Jow

Very experimental fiction work that was a slog to read but presents an interesting study for writers on how a novelist can "break the rules" or challenge the structure of novel writing. Also provides some deep yet obscure reflections on reading, writing, the book industry, books, academia, language, etc.

Jade Flynn

"“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” 

I really appreciate the risk that Calvino took with this novel. I will be picking up Calvino's Invisible Cities later on in the year. He's got me intrigued. 

Read for the International Reads Book Club. I will be sharing my in-depth thoughts on the novel at the end of the month on the groups Goodreads page. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116231-international-reads

Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.

Pam Sartain

I read this for a book group, and it has some many different ways of being written, it was very interesting.

the reader is addressed in the second person, and off we go on an adventure, where you read 10 beginnings of other books, plus some intrigue and a bit of romance. all is all, different and interesting!

Katherine

My favourite book of all time. A delightful, slightly insane postmodernist masterpiece.

Prashant Prasad

In English at the bottom.
È meraviglioso. L'ho letto in italiano ovviamente. 
Una delle prose più belle, Calvino è il narratore italiano per eccellenza.

Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore sono dodici racconti chiusi una cornice al di là dell'inverosimile. Il Lettore passa le giornate a ricorrere la fine dei libri che per un caso o per l'altro gli vengono strappati di mano. 
Interessante che i nomi dei capitoli diano l'inizio a un'altra storia.

Passando alla recensione vera e propria devo dire che la prosa è ben fatta, la trama è consistente e strutturata e la narrazione, a parte alcuni tratti, è coinvolgente. L'unica pecca è che nessuno lo conosce abbastanza.

Wonderful. I've read it in Italian, but Calvino is the Perfect Italian Narrator. 

The plot is quite complicated, there are twelve stories in a frame of a Reader who tries to end the books he reads. In this frame he has to run around the world to get a copy readable.

At the conclusion I had a sensation of not-finished-yet of the story, the chapters name tell another story begins.

Michelle Lilholm Bennett

** spoiler alert **
           In this book, Calvino is using a quite interesting technique in capturing the readers attention. He keeps starting new stories in the book, and I kept getting the "I-want-to-know-more"-feeling. I do find it a bit frustrating that he doesn't tell the ending in any of the stories, but it has to be that way in order to be coherent with the storyline. 
There are a few passages that I had to struggle through, but all in all it is quite interesting to read.

Faheem Kajee

Wow, this book was a total mind-fuck! I need to reread to totally appreciate it.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

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Highlights