num_pages: 260
description: 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.
language: English
title: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
titlecomplete: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
characters: Lotaria Vipiteno, The reader, Ludmilla Vipiteno, Silas Flannery, Irnerio, Ermes Marana
genres: Classics, Italian Literature, Magical Realism, Books About Books, Italy, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 93303
awards: awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Ars Translationis, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Ein Buch für die Stadt
publisher: Vintage Classics