How long does it take to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler?
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino takes about 4 hours 46 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 46 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1982. 260 pages, about 71,500 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 57 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 46 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 59 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.
Subjects: Metafiction, postmodernism, experimental fiction, novel in frames, reading, writing
