If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Calvino's experimental novel If on a Winters Night a Traveler looks back to the great age of narration, when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded. It is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winters Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book that opens with an exhortation: Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Alas, after 30 or so pages he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers that it is actually by Polish writer Bazakbal.