if on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Hardcover

Calvino. Italo; Translated By William Weaver

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436082713 ISBN 13: 9780436082719

Publisher: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1981

Synopsis

Italo Calvino's masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book's central character.
Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino, of course, are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another - an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Review

"Breathtakingly inventive" -- David Mitchell "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" -- Salman Rushdie "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" -- Lorna Sage * Observer * "A brilliant work of the imagination and the intellect working in union.And, by the way, it's very funny also" * Scotsman *

Edition details

• Publisher: Lester & Orpen Dennys
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0436082713
• ISBN 13: 9780436082719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259