If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Hardcover, 254 pages

engelsk language

Published 1993 by Everyman's Library.

ISBN:
978-1-85715-138-1
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4 stars (1 review)

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler

Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, …

3 editions

Review of "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

What a marvellous book! I wish I could remember whom or where it was recommended to me, a crisp high five is in order. But that sort of adds to the experience of If on a winter's night a traveller - & it is an experience - delving into chance & the absurd. What a turn of phrase this Italo Calvino has. Such a skilfully-wrought novel. Why haven't I heard of it, even in passing? I plan on reading it again & will be sad if it's immediately purged from my memory by some quirk of the universe or bureaucratic subterfuge. Or perhaps I won't, delightedly reading it for the first time then returning here to find my own review waiting for me.

Subjects

  • Metafiction
  • postmodernism
  • experimental fiction
  • novel in frames
  • reading
  • writing
  • storytelling
  • love
  • loss
  • desire
  • the power of imagination
  • Books and reading
  • Books and reading--fiction
  • Man-woman relationships
  • Man-woman relationships--fiction
  • Italian fiction--history and criticism
  • Italian fiction--to 1800--history and criticism
  • Pq4809.a45 s3713