Product Description

`A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say' Italo Calvino

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34565 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books
'I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends'

Lorna Sage, Observer
`A devastating, wonderfully ingenious parody of all those dreary best-sellers… take it with you next time you plan to travel in an armchair'

Allan Massie, Scotsman
`A brilliant work of the imagination and the intellect working in union. And, by the way, it's very funny, also'

Customer Reviews

Five stars? Hello? Are you MAD?
What on earth are all these reviewers who've given this book five stars DOING with their lives?! Do they really believe this stream of self-absorbed intellectual showboating is worth the considerable effort that's required to finish it?

I read If On A Winter's Night...because it was prescribed by my book club (!) and I only struggled to the end because I wanted to see if Calvino's mental doodlings would eventually pinpoint some universal truth - surely the purpose of all serious literature?

Instead, it left me completely cold. There is nothing here for anyone who spends their time engaging in the real world, with real people. The book says nothing of any significance about love, courage, dignity, humility or any of the other great themes that frame our lives.

It is a chin-stroking, introspective dissertation on the nature of reading and objectivity. Life is too short!

Clever, but one for the post-modernists
I bought this book having seen it mentioned in various lists for 'Greatest Books of the 20th Century'. If you are a fan of the post-modernist novel then this should please you as it plays with the structure of the novel and with ideas of literary conventions in a very smart way. Calvino was clearly ahead of his time because authors like Peter Carey have clearly borrowed the convention in books examining the act of writing books. If you are a real literary 'nut' or member of the post-modernist cognoscenti then you should enjoy the way that the book leads you along various twists and turns, forensically examining the nature of writing and the fallacy of the novel.

I personally found the book to be a little too clever and I never felt drawn into the self-referential world that is created by the central quest of the book. I greatly admire the intellectual trapeze act, but was left feeling a little cold.

the pleasure of reading
I've never read a book like this one... A story about books, authors, readers and about the pleasure of reading. We follow the adventures of a reader that is searching for a book that starts but which is abruptly interrupted. Who is this person? I think it is me, each time I pickup a new book...

No one with a passion for reading will be indifferent to this one.