If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

"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 experimental 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—in a truly unique work of metafiction—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