If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

By: Italo Calvino

Narrated by: Jefferson Mays

Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.

©1979 Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.p.A., Torino; 1981 Harcourt, Inc. (translation) (P)2017 Recorded Books

Personal favorite!

My all time person favorite book in spoken word! Listening to it was a whole new experience to just reading it! Loved the narration!!

Unusual, but thought-provoking

In a parallel to life, I loved some of these stories and disliked others. I felt Ludmilla disappeared in the last third. This is a book I need to listen to more than once. So complex any mysterious.

Intellectual exercise

This book is more of an exploration of reading than a novel. Calvino’s examination of authors, readers and reading evolves through a strange puzzle of unfinished novels and a reader’s search for the rest of each story. The novel may be intellectually brilliant, but it does not make the best story to listen to for entertainment . Unless you are seeking a literary challenge, I recommend this only as a great book to fall asleep to.

Narrator was great

While it was amusing and funny at first, it started to get old when the same obstacle kept repeating itself. By the half way point I was getting pretty exasperated and antsy for the book to just end especially with the random and uncomfortable pornographic scenes. It was very intellectual and sharp but just a little to random and unfocused for my taste. The narrator did a great job though.

Was difficult to listen to.

My mind kept wandering. I found the book a dull. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had read the book instead of listening to it. The story skipped around and was difficult for me to follow without having visual cues.

After finishing the book, you, the reader, sit do

After finishing the book, you, the reader, sit down to try to quantify how exactly you feel about a book like this one.

Odd but delightful

I'm not sure what I expected, but what I got was a thoroughly odd, absolutely delightful read. The performance is outstanding...I'm not sure I'd've enjoyed it half so much reading it to myself. Highly recommended.

Loved the concept

Would’ve been much better read than heard. With the ability to ponder while reading things would likely not seem so tedious....not surprising, this was a concept within the book itself.

A fascinating book well performed for Audible

This is truly a fascinating and curious book. Jefferson Mays does a wonderful job narrating it for Audible. The book had me in its grip wondering what was going to happen on the next page.

Brilliant nothingness

I can only describe what I've just experienced in listening to this book by making an analogy with certain pieces of music, of a kind that are brilliant in execution, featuring the virtuosity of the player and the technical pyrotechnic brilliance of the composer, while lacking anything that moves me. I sit in awe of the skill of both composer and performer, drawn to this bit of excellence or that, while being left cold by the whole; no fault of the performer, but of something fundamentally missing from the piece.
Even so do I find myself, after ten hours of listening to a brilliant narrator, whose work I seek out, perform an ingenious work of, what: fiction? Philosophy? Literary critique dolled up in fancy clothes and taken to the ball?
The atmospherics are brilliant; evoking a Europe in the shadow of the cold war and seventies-era economic malaise. The pastiches of different genres are brilliant, each catching a different tone and atmosphere. The trick of the chapter titles is brilliant, and I'll cop to not seeing it coming until the end. The bewildering maze of interlocking story threads is brilliant.
And all in service of something that, in the end, I'll remember as an etude, rather than as a piece of art. this feels like an authorial study to me, a self-consciously nihilistic book that leaves me with nothing but moonbeams and admiration for skill, when all is said and done.
I cannot recommend this book to most readers. If you liked Foucault's Pendulum, this is in the same region but not as good. There are readers for whom this will work, as witnessed by a lovely 5-star review I read before writing this one. Blessings to you if you find joy here, we all need more joy and less judgment about it. But I will require persuasion to pick up a Calvino again.