If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Hardcover

Calvino, Italo

4.03

97,756 ratings by Goodreads

9780436082719: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436082713 ISBN 13: 9780436082719

Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1981

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Calvino's dazzling post-modernist masterpiece combines a love story, a detective story and a sardonic dissection of the publishing industry in a scintillating allegory of reading. Based on a witty anaolgy 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 is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of same book - IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT by Italo Calvino - are constantly and comically frustrated. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS of our day

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Review:

"[Italo Calvino is] one of the world's best fabulists."--John Gardner, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Calvino is a wizard."--Mary McCarthy, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS "[Calvino] manages to charm and entertain the reader in the teeth of a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable readerly expectations."--John Updike, THE NEW YORKER "Calvino is that very rare phenomenon, a true original . . . If on a winter's night a traveler is breathtakingly complex and self-conscious (there are moments when it quite literally makes one gasp with astonishment) . . . [yet it] is one of the most accessible and enchanting novels written in the last fifty years."--from the Introduction by Peter Washington

Book Description:

KEY NOTES: * Stunning new covers to increase backlist sales. * A legendary writer who, with this title, has treated us to one of the most enjoyable, playful, magical and influential European books of the century. * Praise for If non a winter's night: 'As captivaing and intelligent a conjuring act as you are likely to find in a years reading' - Observer

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