If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
Author(s): Italo Calvino
Novel | Translated fiction | Western Europe
'Breathtakingly inventive' David Mitchell 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.
Review: Ingenious * Mail on Sunday *
Mind-bending and thoroughly post-modern, Calvino's masterpiece of self-reference ('you' are part of the plot), its dizzyingly clever, labyrinthine construction has made it a classic -- Marc Chacksfield * ShortList *
Breathtakingly inventive
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
Product Information
'A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say' Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. During the war he was a member of the Italian Resistance and joined the Communist Party, although he later left in 1957. One of the most respected writers of our time, his best-known works of fiction include Invisible Cities, If on a winter's night a traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1981 he was awarded the prestigious French Legion d'Honneur. He died in Siena in 1985.
General Fields
- :
- : Penguin Random House
- : Vintage Classics
- : 0.194
- : 01 December 2001
- : 200mm X 132mm X 17mm
- : 01 April 2005
- : books
Special Fields
- : Italo Calvino
- : Paperback
- : New edition
- : English
- : 853.914
- : 272
- : Modern fiction