If on a winter's night a traveler

Lore & Background

The novel begins with a chapter on the art and nature of reading and is divided into twenty-two passages. Odd-numbered passages and the final passage are narrated in the second person, concerning events purportedly happening to the novel's reader. These chapters describe the reader's adventures in reading Calvino's novel, including meeting a woman named Ludmilla. Alternating with these are even-numbered passages, each the first chapter of ten different novels of widely varying style, genre, and subject-matter, all broken off at moments of plot climax. The second-person narrative develops into a cohesive novel about two protagonists tracking an international book-fraud conspiracy, a mischievous translator, a reclusive novelist haunted by advertisers and programmers, a collapsing publishing house, and several repressive governments. The titles of the fragmentary fictions, when read in order, form a sentence: 'If on a winter's night a traveler, 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?—he asks, anxious to hear the story.'

The novel includes a fictional country called Cimmeria, described as having existed between World War I and World War II, with capital Örkko and principal resources of peat and bituminous compounds. Cimmeria was located somewhere on the Gulf of Bothnia and has since been absorbed; its people and language of the 'Bothno-Ugaric' group have disappeared. Another fictional country, the Cimbrian People's Republic, allegedly absorbed Cimmeria after World War II.

Reader's Guide

If on a winter's night a traveler is significant as a landmark postmodernist novel that explores the nature of reading, authorship, and narrative structure. Its use of second-person address directly involves the reader in the story, while the alternating chapters of incomplete novels create a metafictional puzzle. The book was influenced by Vladimir Nabokov, the literary group Oulipo, and the structural semiology of A. J. Greimas. Calvino also cited Mikhail Bulgakov, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Juan Rulfo, José María Arguedas, Jorge Luis Borges, and G. K. Chesterton as influences on the ten stories. Author David Mitchell described being 'magnetised' by the book as an undergraduate, and its structure inspired his novel Cloud Atlas. Novelist Scarlett Thomas uses it to teach innovative contemporary fiction. Sting named his 2009 album If on a Winter's Night... after the book, and musician Bill Ryder-Jones released an album as a musical adaptation.

Did You Know?

• The novel's structure is said to be an adaptation of the structural semiology of A. J. Greimas.
• The fictional country Cimmeria has a capital called Örkko and its principal resources are peat and by-products, bituminous compounds.
• The titles of the fragmentary fictions, when read in order, form a sentence that begins 'If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork...'
• Author David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas was inspired by the structure of If on a winter's night a traveler.