Review: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Title: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Author: Italo Calvino
Nationality: Italian
Year: 1979
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Length: 200+ pages
Rating: 7/10
Summary: Books That Are Not Quite As Good As They Should Be

The outline

Italo Calvino’s most famous work uses all the tricks of post-modernism to create a rare novel written in the second person, which consists mostly of the opening chapters of other novels.

Sample

Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. 
And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. 

The verdict

There are great ideas at the centre of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. Italo Calvino’s most famous work is a cornerstone of post-modernism, a rare novel written in the second person which consists mostly of the opening chapters of other novels. It’s clever, it’s quotable and it’s definitely original.

Unfortunately while some of the novel sizzled with genius, some of it was just tedious. Some of the novel openings were electric and I would have loved to read on, but other parts were turgid. It’s also a novel that feels dated and must even have done so when it was first published in 1979 – stylistically it’s much more similar to authors such as Brecht and Beckett than other books of the same era such as early Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie.

Another problem with the novel, which is no fault of Calvino’s, is the translation by William Weaver which I found to be clumsy in places. An excess of commas and clauses in unusual places made it frequently obvious that I was reading a book that hadn’t been originally written in English.

However, I did enjoy reading the novel and found Calvino’s imagination impressive which is what saved it from a lower score. But ultimately, although we’re taught to think the original should be the best, If on a Winter’s Night was nowhere near as good as its literary descendant Cloud Atlas or Calvino’s own Invisible Cities.