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    If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
    If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
    If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
    Audiobook9 hours

    If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

    Written by Italo Calvino

    Narrated by Jefferson Mays

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel … Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade."—from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

    Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.

    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense.

    Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.

    "Calvino is a wizard … There is no halting [this book's] metamorphoses."—New York Times Review of Books
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    TranslatorWilliam Weaver
    Release dateAug 11, 2017
    ISBN9781501963506
    Author

    Italo Calvino

    ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees, and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.

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    Reviews for If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

    4/5

    2,929 ratings117 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be one of the greatest novels ever written. Calvino is a master storyteller and the narration by Jefferson Mays is outstanding. The book is highly recommended and offers something new with each reading.

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    • 4/5
      This is a truly unique book that plays upon the romance of reading to create a playful, profound and thought-provoking novel. At the center of the narrative is an unnamed Reader. Each book he begins, he cannot finish. Maybe the edition is misprinted with only the first chapter. But each time he tries to procure an accurate copy, he finds himself reading an entirely different but equally compelling novel. Together with another disgruntled reader, a strange kind of detective plot unfolds. The beauty of Calvino's prose is rapturous. This lyrical novel reads like a strange but fascinating dream. Each chapter melting from the mind as new wonders emerge. Lovely - and truly unlike anything else I've ever read.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Great narration. Would definitely recommend giving this one a listen !
    • 5/5
      One of the greatest novels ever written. Calvino is a master story teller who will have you reading this novel again and again, finding something new each time.
      Jefferson Mays is outstanding in the narration.
    • 5/5
      Bob. A. Bob book. By a writer. With words. And.
    • 5/5
      This book was amazing. As usual, I'm late to the party since this book came out before I was born, but I can now say that in reading it I was floored. I was also strangely reminded of a series of books... an unfortunate series... the self-aware narrator, bizarre characters, meta-fictional elements, and general absurdity of this book reminded me at odd points of A Series of Unfortunate Events. And I have LT members to thank for bringing this book up in a Talk post so I was able to learn about it!
    • 4/5
      highly convoluted, self-referential story, something that Douglas Hofstadter would appreciate
    • 4/5
      Strangest book I’ve ever read ... but I liked it a lot.
    • 2/5
      I tried to read this book. But unless you're REALLY into tarot cards it is both boring and difficult to follow. Bad combination.
    • 4/5
      A book for every reader who likes to think about reading! A tour de force about the role of fiction, the function of writers, and especially the act of reading. It's also the only book I can think of that is successfully told primarily in the second person.

      It has the best first chapter I've ever read. Here's a delightful passage:

      "You have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too."
    • 4/5
      “At times a title is enough to kindle in me the desire for a book that perhaps does not exist.”

      When I first attempted to read Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler years ago, I was not prepared for, or maybe not in the mood for what a strange metafictional trip Calvino had in store for me. I had just finished his Invisible Cities, which I adored, and I have to admit the title of this novel captured me in a way that had nothing to do with what the book was, but in a way the above quote (from the penultimate chapter) suggests.

      If you understand that this “novel” is really the beginnings of ten distinct stories, each interrupted just as it gets really interesting, interspersed with the Reader’s (and Other Reader’s) attempts to track down the missing pages, which is all part of a mind-bending meditation on reading and storytelling, then you will have a much better chance of appreciating Calvino’s book. I’m glad I finally came back to it. It was challenging at times, but I know it will stay with me for a long time.
    • 4/5
      This is exactly the kind of book for a literary criticism class to read. While the book-within-a-book trope got tiresome, the novel is a terrific deconstruction of text, the reader, and reading.
    • 5/5
      What an unusual book that reads so addictively! What a remarkable and exhaustive exploration into books - into reading and writing them... Sounds dry? Not at all! It's funny and serious and downright enchanting at times, with characters who are puzzling and very real at the same time. Plots within plots, individuals and cultures as to their attitude towards books and reading; what makes something a good read - from different perspectives; some unavoidable criticism of censure; satire directed at tendency of some to over-examine or over-interpret a novel and lose the best of it in the process, and so much more tackled in this little book. This is a book in which I didn't want to miss a single sentence...
    • 4/5
      Why did I read this one now, given that it has been on my radar for years? Well, because I stumbled across it while browsing my local library for available e-audiobooks and decided now was as good a time as any. I usually steer clear of "books about books" and meta-fiction but the premise, and its delivery, is just so darn enticing. Yes, I did get frustrated at first when the railway station scene (the first interrupted story) abruptly ends. I was quite happy to follow the Reader (our protagonist) through his madcap adventures of mystery, intrigue and satire while on his quest for the full novels. Through this dizzying array of interrupted stories, readers, writers, publishers and translators, Calvino makes use of the second person narration, blurring the lines between the Reader and us, the reader reading the story. The end result is one of those rare novels were I really do feel as though I have walked into a book. Jefferson Mays is an excellent narrator but lets be honest, this meta-fiction requires a level of concentration, and led me to some contemplative thought. For that reason, I did something I typically do not do when listening to audiobooks: I just sat down and listened (kind of what the Reader in the story was instructed to do at the onset). While some might try to analyze, explain or dissect [If on a Winter's Night a Traveler], my recommendation is to just sit back and experience it. Favorite Quote: “This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .” I should mention that If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is my first foray into Calvino's works. There is no question that Calvino is a wonderful writer, but this has left me pondering where I should go from here.
    • 2/5
      Often funny, sometimes very funny. I love the idea, the creativity. But---perhaps it is the translation---the writing to my ears is incredibly grating. Short, harsh words in overlong sentences? I'm not sure, but I don't enjoy it. Perhaps, too, the meta-fictional aspects alienated me, keeping me a step away from being absorbed. > A gust of wind shuffles the two manuscripts. The reader tries to reassemble them. A single novel results, stupendous, which the critics are unable to attribute. It is the novel that both the productive writer and the tormented writer have always dreamed of writing.
    • 3/5
      You know that in life "the best you can expect is to avoid the worst." Not so with books. Expectations can be high because consequences of a bad book are not serious.

      So begins Calvino's book about books. Those who love books will enjoy this first chapter. The excitement of choosing a new book and settling down to read it.

      Calvino' s book is a book about books. It's a post-modern book, experimental actually. Chapters of unfinished stories alternate with chapters of a specific story about a Reader and an Other Reader, but also concern book topics such as publishing, censorship, and plagiarism. All this can be confusing, but it does work out in the end.

      I liked this book. Now that I can see the structure, I'd probably enjoy a re-read.
    • 4/5
      A crazy ride of a story, in which the Reader is the main character who is simply trying to read a book, but who gets frustrated at every turn and by more and more outlandish disruptions. Each new manuscript promises to be the completion of the previous, but only introduces yet another new book, which, in turn, is cut short and unfinished. Chapters of this main plot (which also contains an Other Reader, with whom the Reader carries out a love story of sorts, and a romp of a detective story as well) alternate with the actual first chapters of the unfinished manuscripts, which themselves leave the (R/r)eader genuinely frustrated and wanting more.In short, it's a hoot, although it does get a bit bogged down in its own absurdities toward the end, I feel. Think Inspector Clouseau meets Arabian Nights meets a Choose Your Own Adventure book in which all the choices are just tantalizingly out of your reach, and then throw in a healthy pinch of musings on the nature of readers, authors, books, and the act of reading itself.
    • 5/5
      This would have to be one of the most unusually good books I have read. It is not quite a novel and not quite a collection of short stories, organised in an unusual way. It is partly written in the second person (Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was my first second-person novel) and on several occasions, the author speaks directly to the reader (a literary technique known as "authorial intrusion"). The main story is structured using numbered chapters, interspersed with the beginnings of several books (with the relevant book names as chapter headings) that relate directly to the main story. It is rather complex in terms of its structure and I couldn't help thinking it is very much a "post-modern" novel. But it works. I am often surprised by the number of books that are about books and authors, a bit like 42nd Street - a musical within a musical. But this book is very clever. While at times I couldn't help thinking that Calvino had turned a number of "false starts" into a publication, it is too good to have been written so perfunctorily. Two stand-out parts work for me. First, Calvino addresses two types of writers (pp. 173-4):One of the two is a productive writer, the other a tormented writer. The tormented writer watches the productive writer filling pages with uniform lines, the manuscript growing in a pile of neat pages. In a little while the book will be finished: certainly a best seller - the tormented writer thinks with a certain contempt but also with envy. He considers the productive writer no more than a clever craftsman, capable of turning out machine-made novels catering to the taste of the public; but he cannot repress a strong feeling of envy for that man who expresses himself with such methodological confidence... [The productive writer] feels [the tormented writer] is struggling with something obscure, a tangle, a road to be dug leading no one knows where... and he is overcome with admiration. Not only admiration, but also envy; because he feels how limited his work is, how superficial compared with what the tormented writer is seeking.I certainly feel like each of these authors depending on the type of writing I am engaged in. That self-consciousness is part of the process is something that Calvino weaves into the plot perfectly. Second, Calvino picks up on how I read (p. 254):Reading is a discontinuous and fragmentary operation.What I find most interesting about this reflection is that Calvino's work, or at least the several of his works I have read so far, all seem to play to the discontinuous and fragmentary reader. The structure of this work, much like Invisible Cities and Mr Palomar, suits a style of reader who is unable to read in large chunks of time. While not being able to read long and uninterrupted is far from ideal, Calvino's work is presented in convenient and memorable chunks that suit the fragmentary and disrupted peace of the post-modern worker. There is still a little more of Calvino's work for me to read, but I have now covered his most famous works. And I am delighted to have "discovered" Marcovaldo in a Shanghai bookstore which introduced me to one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century only a few years ago.
    • 5/5
      What an experience this book was! It took me two tries to finish it, but I sailed through on my second try. I would warn anyone who wants to read this postmodern novel, to allot enough time to it as it is not an easy read. Within this novel itself are ten unfinished and unrelated novels. If that doesn't scare you away, prepare yourself for some intriguing reading. Know that this novel is about books and reading. The plot weaves around the inserted novels which are incorporated for a reason you, the Reader, will only find out at the end. I was totally absorbed in this book my second go round. The only thing I found disconcerting was that the writing was so good, I often wondered if some of what the author was trying to say was simply floating away over my head. It is too involved a novel for me to ever consider giving it a reread, but I would love to try another Calvino novel...after a short break to unwind!
    • 5/5
      This was every bit as good as the last time that I read it.

      For me, this is an 'event book', one of those novels that divides reading into a before and after. Wikipedia quotes David Mitchell as saying that the book has dated and is less impressive than it was. I suspect that I know which writer's work will still be read a hundred years from now (and Calvino's already been dead for three decades)... IOAWNAT is an education for any novelist wishing to experiment with the form. And at the same time, it really is laugh-out-loud funny for much of the time. Echoes of Borges' 'Fictions' reverberate around this novel and it's none the worse for that. It has to be read for Chapter 9 alone, the Ataguitania sequence, one of the smartest, funniest passages of writing in modern fiction.

      In case you don't know this book, I'm not going to give away anything about the story. Suffice to say, I loved it but for those looking for a 'safe' read, this isn't it.
    • 4/5
      Playful satire on the act of reading and the struggle to create the perfect novel. Calvino toys with the conventions of genre and the issues of national literature and censorship, creating a sense of vertigo for the reader while always exercising a firm authorial control. Brilliant. Try this if you like Borges or Eco.
    • 2/5
      It’s an interesting concept for a book, with short story fragments alternating with a story line about two readers, but there was too much meta-discussion about writing and reading, and Calvino directly addressing the reader for my taste. It’s certainly ambitious and creative, and demands something of the reader, so if you like that sort of thing, it may be for you. I just found myself mired in banal and tedious passages too often to recommend it.
    • 3/5
      I loved how Calvino describes reading in the opening chapter and then how he inserts bits of the writing and reading process throughout the book. I'm also frustrated, because like the Reader, I want to continue reading all of the beginnings. There were a few bits, namely Chapter 9, that were a bit too Kafkaesque for my taste.
    • 3/5
      I have a lot of disjointed thoughts about this book but then the book was disjointed so that makes sense. so this is about reading, about writing. It's clever. When I read a book like this I am impressed with the cleverness but when I think of it as a book that is enjoyable to read, it isn't that. This was work. It did not pull me along. So here are my random thoughts. The book starts out with a train, small town and I am reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky so the tow remind me of each other. The next thing I notice is that the book is about writing and the process of writing, how the writer develops the story and the how the reader approaches the story. From this, I am reminded of Stephen King's On Writing. The writing is postmodernist narrative and it is a Frame story. We first have the story from one perspective followed by commentary of the story from another perspective and the story keeps changing. Each chapter divided into two parts. You, the reader, is a character in the book. It is a "Quest" to finish the book. The journey, arrival/frustration, final ordeal, goal. Also for me, I notice that as the reader goes from book to book, the creativity of the writer deteriorates, more use of ghost writer, formulas, plagiarism, computers and less story telling and more sex and erotica. I know that this is gifted writing, I appreciated much, but I really did not enjoy the time I spent on it.
    • 3/5
      Very funny at the beginning, before it just gets too complicated and doesnt seem to make a lot of sense any more. The end is quite good again.
    • 4/5
      There are some books that you can come back and read for leisure, some for fun, some so that you can understand it better;its symbols and innuendos..
      This book, it can be read for all those reasons.. summed up together. Looking for another read of this...
    • 4/5
      You have just finished reading Italo Calvino’s novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Now, you want to write a review of the book that summarizes your thoughts and feelings about the experience. However, given the playfulness and complexity of the work itself, you are finding writing that summary a very hard thing to do. So you decide to follow the advice that the author himself offers the reader at the beginning of the book: “Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade.” Unfortunately, though, you find that counsel to be considerably less helpful than you might have hoped!You begin by trying to describe the structure and plot, but even that proves challenging because this book is about as meta as any fiction you have ever encountered. The novel you read is divided into 12 chapters, the first ten of which are each split into two parts. The first halves of those initial chapters tell the story of how you, the reader, while simply trying read something new and interesting, become immersed in a complicated international conspiracy in which a secret cabal called the Organization of Apocryphal Power led by a sinister language translator is apparently intent on trying to undermine the value of fiction itself. In the second part of each chapter, you then confront the beginning of a different novel, all entailing a completely separate story told in a different style. However, all ten of those books are cut off at a dramatic moment in their respective plots, which compels your globe-trotting effort to find how each of them ends.So, did you enjoy the experience of reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino? Well, mostly yes but, you reluctantly admit, a little no as well. On one hand, you found the book to be remarkably inventive and unlike anything you have ever read before; the influence it has had on other novels you also like (e.g., David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas) is abundantly clear. Further, you thought that the author’s frequent ruminations on the nature of reading and the implicit relationship between the reader and the writer were really interesting. You also were intrigued by several of the novel fragments and fully understood the desire to find out how they concluded. On the other hand, there were times when you thought the frame story to be too convoluted and you were somewhat frustrated by the underdeveloped nature of how your love affair with the Other Reader was told. Still, you will have no problem recommending this post-modern classic to any other you who might contemplate reading it.
    • 4/5
      An interesting attempt at involving the reader as more than just a passive observer. What appears at first to be a simple printer's error evolves into something much weirder. Ultimately though, I liked the first and last framing chapters the best, and I liked some of the "first chapters" but disliked others. That's the best description for this that I can think of, it's a book of first chapters.
    • 2/5
      I could not get into this one.
    • 4/5
      You are reading a book which opens with the line, “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveller,” and you think, sigh, metafiction. But this is Italo Calvino, and so you take the advice Calvino offers: “Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought”– Hang on, every other? How will you know which ones to dispel and which ones to keep? And yet, it is perhaps sound advice as you read about a reader who reads a book only for his reading to be cut short, and when he goes looking for a complete copy of the novel he was reading he discovers he had been reading an entirely different book altogether… And at the book shop he meets a young woman who is also interested in this literary mystery he has uncovered, and together they discover yet a third novel mixed in with the previous two. But then he meets the young woman’s sister and becomes involved in her schemes… and at some point both young women end up in one of the narratives you are reading about him reading… And yet despite this literary shell game, where the narrative peas seem to proliferate out of sight under the cups, the whole is intensely readable and not in the slightest bit confusing. In parts it reminded me of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, although without the prissiness. It certainly convinced me I should read more Calvino – If on a winter’s night a traveller may be one long literary trick, but it’s gloriously done. Bravo.
    • 3/5
      This is a book that, if it sounds interesting to you, it is probably worth trying.As it turned out, I really didn't like it.It has some interesting things to say on reading and writing, but I had a couple of major problems with it.The first, is that the story is written in the second person. Outside of a Chose Your Own Adventure, I've always found second person POV very distancing from the story, even when "you" is clearly a character in the book, not the reader. In this case, "you" is explicitly the person reading the book, and "you, the reader" are unambiguously male, which I am not. It helped, somewhat, when I mentally recast the POV character as Bob.The other problem I had may be partly caused by the translation, certainly it is partly due to my personal tastes. That problem is the books Bob starts, but never manages to finish. They make up half the book and I had two issues with them. 1)They all felt like they were written by the same person. Okay, they were, but in the book they're supposed to be by different authors and in different genres, but they never captured that feeling. Maybe they were more distinct in the original or maybe this was just beyond the author's ability. (I suppose it's possible this was a deliberate choice too.)2)They were all boring and I honestly couldn't understand why Bob would go to such lengths to try to finish reading them. The most promising one involved two characters having a hard time disposing of a corpse, but it was full of just as many dull introspective passages and poorly flowing flashbacks as all the rest. What should have been tense, or funny, ended up a snoozefest.I don't regret reading it, it was short enough that it didn't massively overstay its welcome, but I have no urge to reread it or read anything else by the author.
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