From the very first lines of the novel, Calvino convinces you that you’re an important part of his novel. “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room.”

You think the “you” is you, but later discover that it’s actually a character in the novel, a reader whom the author is talking to, a reader who is desperately trying to unravel the heart of the novel, exploring its themes, and struggling to arrive at a linear conclusion. The structure of the novel itself is complex: each chapter is divided into two sections, the first being in the second person that describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book he is reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader (“you”) finds.

Calvino also connects reading to lovemaking and at some point the “you” shifts from the male reader in the story to the female reader he desires. The sensuality is present right at the start – “Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book.”

The author, in an interview in 1985, stated his book was “clearly” influenced by the writings of Vladimir Nabokov. The Telegraph included the novel in a list of “100 novels everyone should read”, describing it as a “playful postmodernist puzzle”.

Published in 1979. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver, published in 1981.