It's one of those books which stands alone and shine like sun. There is nothing quite like it. It's one of its kind. Unique. There are a few books which you come across where the writing, the prose (so lyrical, and beautiful), makes such an impact that it leaves you completely dazzled, and for a while you are stunned: that, wow! what just happened!; and then you are spellbound, speechless!. And it is one of those books. The Writing is magical, hypnotizing! It snares you in its magical net. It ca...

Why do you read? Maybe you want to impress somebody. Libraries are cool, or so they say. Or you expect to learn something from the books you so carefully select. Or you merely have a preference for intellectual entertainment and books are considered a smart option to fulfill that purpose. Or maybe you read to remember all the lives you haven't lived, or that important person who left a permanent track on you, whom you don’t expect to see again, or to delight again in the innocent thrill of being...

Previously Unpublished Manuscript #1Who am I? Who is I? Who is the I?Unlike my friends and colleagues, Professors Calvino and Galligani, I intend to tell you my name and perhaps to reveal something of my modus operandi (soon, too).This one sentence might already have supplied enough information or implication to let you work out or infer who I am?Have you guessed yet? No? Well, my name is Professor Uzzi-Tuzii, though my friends call me Julian. Not only is that my name, but that is who I am. Yes....

You are about to read Mark Nicholls’s review of Italo Calvino’s postmodern classic If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. You might want to position yourself in a comfortable chair before you begin, or place a cushion behind your back, as we know how arduous it can be to read things off the internet. You might also care to prepare a coffee, a light snack, or to switch a light on before beginning.You might be thinking that this review is not going to interest you, since book reviews on books you hav...

I say this is what happened:Italo Calvino was suffering from a writer's block. He would start a novel, get it to its first curve and abandon it before the resolution. A few months later he would start another with a similar result. Finally, his publishers got impatient because it had been years since the last novel and they said:'Italo, get your shit together! We need a new book. Now!'Italo panicked and did the only thing he could think of. He glued all his failed attempts together and delivered...

Beginning to read a book we always board a train to an unknown destination. Where will it take us and what will we see on our way there?Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longe...

When I was young in the 1950’s, the whole family would gather around our ancient rabbit-eared black & white TV when the postwar sensation Perry Como came on. And every week, he’d start out by singing, ‘Dream along with me - I’m on my way to the Stars!’That’s sorta like where the magician Calvino sends us, in this bemusing and magical romp through the strawberry fields of our imaginations - and his.His book is the very stuff dreams are made on!He uses everything but the kitchen sink as the compon...

Original review: November 2011Imagine that it is winter and there is snow everywhere and you can't go out and all you do for days is read book after book, story after story, gorging yourself on fiction until your subconscious is saturated with characters and plots. Imagine that you fall asleep late one night while reading and you have the cleverest dream ever. That is what reading this book by Calvino is like. (I forgot to mention that if you're a woman, in your strange Calvino dream, you will m...

If on a Winter's Night a TravellerItalo CalvinoJust one word: AWESOME !! "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller. Relax. Let the world around you fade." The opening line of this unusual book really fades the world around you and immerses you in a mystical, eccentric, surreal world where you are energised right from the scratch to encounter the world which refers to its own existence- something which is unprecedented. The book is a genius i...

You gaze, confounded, at your laptop, vainly trying to find a way to review this so-called novel, which you, an anglophone, have perversely read in French, not the native language either of yourself or of the author. Your companion notices your perplexity and tries to help, or, possibly, to confuse you further."It's beautifully written," she says. "But it has no heart.""Mais chère Lectrice, how do you know?" you ask. "You have read If on a winter's night, a traveller, while I have read Si par un...

Imagination, Winged Push me not, not right now,Frozen feet is all I have;Shine me not, not right now,Calming dark is all I have;Correct me not, not right now,Impelling doubt is all I have;Wake me not, not right now,Breathing dream is all I have.Long ago, when I jotted down this poem, I was amidst a whirlwind of events: my final year exams were impending, my heartache was fresh, my best friend had left the city and my muscle tear was repaired but still throbbed a bit. So, I had little to rejoi

An experimental novel. The main character is a reader who can’t finish a book because the print copies are mixed up and he ends up reading first chapters of various novels over and over again. He meets up with a woman who has the same problem and he goes on a search to find the rest of the book for both of them. Actually there are two women, sisters, who have different ideas about books and what the purpose of reading is. They appear in different guises throughout the story. The narrative is lab...

I'm here today to speak with one of the most incisive literary critics of the 20th century, Gilbert Sorrentino, about Italo Calvino's phenomenal If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.GR: Thanks for taking the time, Gil.GS: My pleasure, Glenn.GR: Simple question for starters: What makes this novel so special?GS: If on a winter’s night a traveler, Calvino’s version (and antiversion) of the nouveau roman, fits the conditions for “proper art” proposed by Dedalus/Joyce: “The mind is arrested and raised a...

If on a sick bed, a reader picks up If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino, he or she is almost certain to become more ill. Why, oh why, of all the times I could have read this, I picked it up when I was physically unfit to read it? At first I was just mildly under the weather, and I was comforted by the opening pages which extended an enticing invitation to put up one’s legs and settle down for a good read. How lovely, I thought. The atmospheric first chapter opens in a provincial t...

I can not think of a book that has let me down more than Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Admittedly, this may have been caused by in no small part by my high expectations for this novel after having read the deliriously exciting first chapter several times in a bookstore during one of those quite regular hunts for the next book to steal my heart. I mean, who can resist a first chapter that contains paragraphs like:"In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with...