Blog this item

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

(Vintage Classics)

By Italo Calvino

(102)

| Paperback | 9780099430896

Like If on a Winter's Night a Traveller?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Critics

Enter the maze

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller. Relax. Let the world around you fade." From the opening line of this eccentric book, which I first encountered as an undergraduate 16 years ago, I was magn ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

9 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

This was the first Calvino novel I ever read, and is still my favorite. It's a brilliant piece of meta-fiction that's ingenious, as Calvino always is. A perfect read for someone with ADD, since the story changes every chapter. Mystery, thrills, humor, intellectual stimulation--great book.

Is this helpful?

currerbell said on Oct 28, 2010 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

This book is a nut case.... It is no ordinary novel. It is a novel on authorship, readership, on communication between the two parties. Or even, how chapter echoes with other chapters. As a result, as the backcover said, it formed a sort of labyrinth and everybody is in mist.
Yet, it is enjoy ... (continue)

This book is a nut case.... It is no ordinary novel. It is a novel on authorship, readership, on communication between the two parties. Or even, how chapter echoes with other chapters. As a result, as the backcover said, it formed a sort of labyrinth and everybody is in mist.
Yet, it is enjoyable. It is not an easy read but it is enjoyable. You can't stop thinking what your role is when you are reading this book. It indeed also makes fun with different schools of literary theories as well. Most of all, it mentions the word counts and word analysis method to let people understand the book at a glance, which very much reminds me of the text stat function in Amazon. kakaka. In the past I always don't know why amazon would offer something so stupid as that, and now I knew the originator.
When you read this book, please give up the idea of plot and discourse. Just let it flows and unfolds, where at the end you can see the picture the author tries to bring to your eyes. Worths your time and patience.

Is this helpful?

張小張・Cons said on Jul 3, 2007 | Add your feedback

Imagine that it is winter and there is snow everywhere and you can't go out and all you have to do for days is read book after book, story after story, gorging yourself on fiction until your subconscious is saturated with characters and plots.
Imagine that you fall asleep late one night while rea ... (continue)

Imagine that it is winter and there is snow everywhere and you can't go out and all you have to do for days is read book after book, story after story, gorging yourself on fiction until your subconscious is saturated with characters and plots.
Imagine that you fall asleep late one night while reading and you have a nightmare. That is what reading this book by Calvino is like.
Oh, I forgot to mention that in your nightmare, you will be a man!

Is this helpful?

Top of the pile said on Nov 23, 2011 | Add your feedback

translation william weaver

Is this helpful?

rabbit said on Feb 24, 2011 | Add your feedback

I would rather eat my own fingers than read this book again. I now know that one can truly survive a brain bleed and live to tell the tale.

Is this helpful?

David Anthony Saenz said on Oct 24, 2010 | Add your feedback

If On Winters Night a Traveller

This book almost instantly made it to my favorite novels of all time list.
I have been very impressed with Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. This book discusses many aspects of self-referentiality. Calvino gives an excellent discourse on what it is like to write the words you are readin ... (continue)

This book almost instantly made it to my favorite novels of all time list.
I have been very impressed with Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. This book discusses many aspects of self-referentiality. Calvino gives an excellent discourse on what it is like to write the words you are reading now. I see no reason why not to make the story of the novel itself being created, itself part of the intertwined story. As was true with Calvino's Silar Flannery being a characterization of Calvino's attempt to write the novel, Erasmus is part of the characterization of this author to express life.
Express life is what I, the author is trying to do? Calvino attempts to discusses in some depth the uses of the verb "to read" and "to write". Suppose, as many suppose about mathematics, the 'writing' (or 'mathematics') exists ab eterno, and in absentia of man, and when I write I am just tapping into the great vast already existing Borgesian library of every book - at this point I become just a vessel to deliver what has already been written to a wider audience. Being just a vessel, is it fair to say "it writes" or "Today it writes" as opposed to "I write" or "today I write." One might suppose I have to come up with a plot to sell my writing.

Is this helpful?

Reg Caldera said on Aug 9, 2010 | Add your feedback