If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

Local Description

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

Description

'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.

Promotion info

'A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say' Italo Calvino

Author description

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.