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important character in the book. You think
Ludmilla is beautiful, and you both share a love of books. Throughout the rest of the narrative, you and Ludmilla develop a relationship while on the quest for the rest of the book you had started reading. There are a number of minor characters that appear at various points in the story including Lotaria (Ludmilla's sister), Ermes Marana (a translation scammer), and Silas Flannery (an author).
66:
472:. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by
25:
488:, and is subsequently divided into twenty-two passages. The odd-numbered passages and the final passage are narrated in the second person. That is, they concern events purportedly happening to the novel's reader. (Some contain further discussions about whether the person narrated as "you" is the same as the "you" who is actually reading.) These chapters concern the reader's adventures in reading Italo Calvino's novel,
168:
521:"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."
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to the east. The country has since been absorbed, and its people and language, of the 'Bothno-Ugaric' group, have both disappeared. As
Calvino concludes the alleged, fictional encyclopedia entry concerning Cimmeria: "In successive territorial divisions between her powerful neighbors the young nation
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described himself as being "magnetised" by the book from its start when he read it as an undergraduate, but on rereading it, felt it had aged and that he did not find it "breathtakingly inventive" as he had the first time, yet does stress that "however breathtakingly inventive a book is, it is only
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The chapters, which are the first chapters of different books, all push the narrative chapters along. Themes which are introduced in each of the first chapters will then exist in succeeding narrative chapters. For example, after reading the first chapter of a detective novel, the narrative story
576:
The main character in the first part of each chapter is you, the reader. The narrative starts out when you begin reading a book but then all of the pages are out of order. You then go to a bookstore to get a new copy of the book. When at the bookstore, you meet a girl, Ludmilla, who becomes an
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chapters of this story are the remaining (even) passages, each of which is a first chapter in ten different novels, of widely varying style, genre, and subject-matter. All are broken off, for various reasons explained in the interspersed passages, most of them at some moment of plot climax.
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The second-person narrative passages develop into a fairly cohesive novel that puts its two protagonists on the track of an international book-fraud conspiracy, a mischievous translator, a reclusive novelist haunted by advertisers who wish to
531:, which explores if absolute objectivity is possible, or even agreeable. Other themes include the subjectivity of meaning, the relationship between fiction and life, what makes an ideal reader and author, and authorial originality.
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The pair of chapters following the two on
Cimmeria and its literature are followed by one describing another fictional country called the Cimbrian People's Republic, which allegedly absorbed Cimmeria after World War II.
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547:. The capital is Ă–rkko, and its principal resources are peat and by-products, bituminous compounds. Cimmeria seems to have been located somewhere on the
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takes on a few common detective-style themes. There are also phrases and descriptions that are similar between the narrative and the new stories.
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When the titles of the fragmentary fictions are read in order—as they are by a character near the end of the narrative—they form a sentence:
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included the novel in 69th place in a list of "100 novels everyone should read" in 2009, describing it as a "playful postmodernist puzzle".
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Eventually the reader meets a woman named
Ludmilla, who is also addressed in her own chapter, separately, and also in the second person.
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Cimmeria is a fictional country in the novel. The country is described as having existed as an independent state between
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on 14 November 2011. The album is a musical adaptation of the book and serves as an "imaginary film score".
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uses it to teach innovative contemporary fiction, as an example of different kinds of narrative techniques.
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the conclusion to his unfinished novels, a collapsing publishing house, and several repressive governments.
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as having influenced, in various ways, the narrative style of the ten stories that comprise the book.
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that states a
Knowledge editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.
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population was dispersed; Cimmerian language and culture had no development".
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breathtakingly inventive once" – with once being better than never.
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The theme of a writer's objectivity appears also in
Calvino's novel
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851:. Contemporary Literature. Vol. 26, No. 3, (Autumn 1985), p. 252.
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personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay
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In a 1985 interview with
Gregory Lucente, Calvino stated
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The book begins with a chapter on the art and nature of
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508:in his stories and programmers who demand to let a
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966:. University of Kent. 2008-10-14. Archived from
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53:Learn how and when to remove these messages
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940:"David Mitchell rereads Italo Calvino"
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708:If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers
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727:100 years of Radio Drama Celebrations
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454:Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
279:Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
791:Grundtvig, Birgitte (July 5, 2017).
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892:(September 1983). "Critical Mass".
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865:Comment j'ai Ă©crit un de mes Livres
99:"If on a winter's night a traveler"
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1236:Six Memos for the Next Millennium
1144:If on a winter's night a traveler
914:"100 novels everyone should read"
877:Italo Calvino: letters, 1941–1985
836:If on a winter's night a traveler
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606:Italo Calvino: letters, 1941–1985
587:If on a winter's night a traveler
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964:"Interview with Scarlett Thomas"
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1102:The Path to the Nest of Spiders
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1013:Bill Ryder-Jones (2011-11-07).
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188:by rewriting it in an
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1293:Metafictional novels
1204:Under the Jaguar Sun
706:The 2021 video game
608:), Calvino mentions
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1303:Novels about novels
1283:1979 Italian novels
1169:The Crow Comes Last
1109:The Cloven Viscount
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618:Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki
320:Postmodernist novel
274:Original title
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847:Lucente, Gregory.
640:Legacy and opinion
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190:encyclopedic style
177:is written like a
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82:Please help
77:verification
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36:Please help
33:
1183:Cosmicomics
1151:Mr. Palomar
895:White Dwarf
731:BBC Radio 4
654:White Dwarf
541:World War I
528:Mr. Palomar
466:frame story
434:Mr. Palomar
1277:Categories
1176:Marcovaldo
1044:2023-09-25
1024:2012-03-22
999:2010-12-09
974:2010-12-09
949:2010-12-09
924:2010-12-09
778:References
743:Cimmerians
723:Tim Crouch
715:Toby Jones
622:Juan Rulfo
581:Influences
572:Characters
286:Translator
110:newspapers
39:improve it
1085:Works by
756:Pale Fire
647:reviewed
480:Structure
476:in 1981.
386:777233785
326:Publisher
45:talk page
737:See also
535:Cimmeria
306:Language
765:Quixote
668:Author
557:Finland
486:reading
450:Italian
399:853.914
330:Einaudi
310:Italian
252:Einaudi
184:Please
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553:Sweden
460:. The
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256:Turin
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117:books
799:ISBN
721:and
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543:and
380:OCLC
367:ISBN
361:1981
341:1979
103:news
86:by
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856:^
821:.
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