If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

‘Reading Calvino, you’re constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you’ve never thought of it before. This is highly unnerving- fortunately, you’re usually too busy laughing to go mad-I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends'Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books

Calvino’s masterpiece opens with a scene that’s reassuringly commonplace- apparently. Indeed, it’s taking place now. A reader goes into a bookshop to buy a book- not any book, but the latest Calvino, the book you are holding in your hands. Or is it? Are you the reader? Is this the book? Beware. All assumptions are dangerous on this most bewitching switch-back ride to the heart of storytelling.