If On a Winters Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino

A masterwork by the incomparable, genre-defying, wondrous Italo Calvino. You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it.

But 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 of them all is you, the reader.

Reviews

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.

A devastating, wonderfully ingenious parody of all those dreary best-sellers you buy at the airport... It is a "world novel": take it with you next time you plan to travel in an armchair - Observer

About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (1923-1985), one of Italy's finest post-war writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveller (1979). He died in Siena in 1985.