If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

I honestly don't know what to make of this book—which is exactly why I plan to reread it in the future. For now, I'm giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars, though that rating might change on a second read.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is certainly a challenge to wrap your head around and not for the faint-hearted. It's an intellectual puzzle of a novel, and I even found my vocabulary expanding with words like edulcorate and excogitate making an appearance.


There's no doubt this is a literary classic, and Italo Calvino has a dedicated cult following. However, for me, it's a bit of a Marmite book—you either love it or hate it. I enjoyed the beginning and the ending, but the middle dragged at times, and I found it slow in places.


The novel consists of 22 chapters: 12 numbered chapters that tell one continuous story, and in between them, fragments of different unfinished novels, each with a unique title. But interestingly, if you string together the titles of these fragmented stories, they almost form a coherent sentence:

“If on a winter's night a traveller... Outside the town of Malbork... Leaning from the steep slope... Without fear of wind or vertigo... Looks down in the gathering shadow... In a network of lines that enlace... In a network of lines that intersect... On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon... Around an empty grave... What story down there awaits its end?”

Then there's the overarching story in the numbered chapters, where you—the reader—become the protagonist alongside another reader, Ludmilla, as you both search for the rest of If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, all while navigating a strange and surreal love affair.


This is the first book in my #50BooksAt50Challenge, and it originally came out when I was just three or four years old, way back in 1979. It's certainly a unique reading experience, but one I feel I need to dedicate more time to on a future read.