If on a Winter's Night a Traveller  (English, Paperback, Calvino Italo)

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is a novel which has the reader as the protagonist. The book consists of books which are incomplete, and how the reader tries to solve the mystery as to why it is so. This novel is intriguing, unusual, and exciting.

Summary Of The Book

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is a novel which places the reader as the main character. The reader starts to read a novel, but after about thirty pages he realizes that the book has a printing flaw. The first portion is repeated multiple number of times. Frustrated, he takes the book back to the bookstore where he meets a young woman, Ludmilla, who is also facing the same problem.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller shows that as the reader continues to read different books, he keeps encountering some printing mistake or the other, thereby never getting to complete even a single novel. He then decides to visit the publisher to find out why this is happening. The publisher tells him about Ermes Marana, a fraudulent translator, who has purposely mixed up book contents, authors, titles, and more. This chaos seems impossible to set in order, so the reader decides to look for Marana. He lands up in a place called Ataguitania, and finds himself in a completely unexpected situation.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is a single novel, but essentially tells ten different stories. It was originally published in 1979, and in 2009, it was positioned at the 69th place in The Telegraph’s 100 novels everyone should read.

About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino, born in 1923, was an Italian author, journalist, and film enthusiast.

He has written Cosmicomics Collection of Short Stories, Difficult Loves, Our Ancestors trilogy, The Baron In The Trees, and Invisible Cities.

Calvino joined the University of Turin in 1941 to study Agriculture. But two years later, he took a transfer to the University of Florence. During World War II, the author joined the Italian Resistance, and in 1945 he settled down in Turin. Calvino completed his Master’s degree in 1947, and later worked as a journalist for the newspaper L'Unità and the magazine Rinascita. The Path To The Nest Of Spiders, his first novel, won the 1947 Premio Riccione. In 1975, the author was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy, and the following year he became the recipient of the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 1981, Calvino was awarded the French Légion d'honneur. He passed away in 1985, and at the time of his death, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer.