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

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.

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
• ISBN 10: 0436082713
• ISBN 13: 9780436082719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259