If on a Winter's Night a Traveler's front cover

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Hardcover

Knopf

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About the Book

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver

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 TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book—IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER, 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.

All Editions

9780679420255
Hardcover, 16th Edition
ISBN13: 9780679420255
Knopf, 1993
9781857151381
Hardcover, 17th Edition
ISBN13: 9781857151381
David Campbell Publishers, 1993