A review by magmun
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

4.0

This is such a weird and meta absurdist book in the best way. It felt like a love letter to readers and the action of reading itself. I really enjoyed the different perspectives and views on books and reading, and the format of the novel itself. The language used is very beautiful, despite being hard to follow at times as is the point. I read the William Weaver English translation so I’m interested to see what differences in meaning arise in the different translations vs the original Italian. I will note that I didn’t enjoy all of the stories within the story and that Calvino really can’t write women well at all. They are essentially just sexual objects or only serve to advance the plot for male characters. He also seems to have a problem writing non white characters and stories (which also included the weird sex stuff with women). I would be interested to see if that is prevalent in his other work or not.