Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (October 15,1923 – September 19, 1985) was an Italian writer and novelist.

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler

Perhaps Calvino's most famous novel, this begins with the words, "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller." It's a novel therefore in which the reader plays a starring role. The reader gets a love interest, the Other Reader, and obstacles thrown in his way. In particular, the first story runs out after only a chapter. A pattern is quickly set up with single chapters of novels being cut off in their prime. Interspersed with these are chapters in which the reader's story, the pursuit of the end of these intriguing novels, and the pursuit of the Other Reader, is played out. Each chapter is written in the style of a different genre of work.

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The central conceit of this novel is the quest to find a complete and coherent narrative: a quest being undertaken by the actual reader and the Reader as character, struggling to hunt down the ever-elusive Chapters. In fact Calvino does hide a short, elegant story in the book (more of a vignette, really), and with a magician's flair he hides it in plain sight in a part of the book to which most readers give cursory attention.

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