Front cover image for If on a winter's night a traveler

If on a winter's night a traveler

Italo Calvino, William Weaver (Translator)
Calvino shows that the novel, far from being a dead form, is capable of endless mutations. If on a winter's night a traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author. Based on an analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, this book is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book are constantly and comically frustrated
Print Book, English, ©1981
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, ©1981
World literature
260 pages ; 22 cm
9780151436897, 9780156439619, 9780679420255, 9781857151381, 9780015143688, 0151436894, 0156439611, 0679420258, 1857151380, 0015143686
7197128
1
3(22)
If on a winter's night a traveler
10(15)
2
25(17)
Outside the town of Malbork
34(8)
3
42(26)
Leaning from the steep slope
54(14)
4
68(23)
Without fear of wind or vertigo
77(14)
5
91(24)
Looks down in the gathering shadow
103(12)
6
115(25)
In a network of lines that enlace
132(8)
7
140(29)
In a network of lines that intersect
161(8)
8
169(41)
On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon
199(11)
9
210(24)
Around an empty grave
221(13)
10
234(19)
What story down there awaits its end?
244(9)
11
253(7)
12
260
A novel
"A Helen and Kurt Wolff book."
Translation of: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore. Torino : Einaudi, c1979