Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.

除了卡尔维诺还有谁能如此准确和优美的捕捉普通人生活中的一个个瞬间，并将现实和幻想熔于一炉？一个面包店里的小偷，一个小酒馆里的狂热夜晚，一个陷入性幻想的年轻士兵，一个游泳时发现比基尼泳衣掉了下半截的中产阶级妇女--所有这些都被卡尔维诺的如花妙笔写成了一篇篇杰出探索人类内部复杂世界的小说。在这些二十世纪四五十年代的杰作中，卡尔维诺描写了当对爱的自我欺骗和幻觉（经常是自我恋爱）被揭破时，那些觉悟和警醒的瞬间。Harcourt Brace Jovanovich1983年英语第一版，William Weaver， Archivald Colquhoun， 和Peggy Wright翻译。 Who but Italo Calvino could blend realism and illusion to capture so precisely and so elegantly these moments in the lives of ordinary people? A theft in a pastry shop, a frenzied evening in a tavern, a young soldier caught up in a private fantasy of seduction, a middle-class woman who discovers while swimming that she has lost the lower part of her bikini—all are transformed by Calvino's consummate artistry into stories that brilliantly explore intricate interior worlds. In these classics of the 1940s and 1950s, Calvino depicts instants of recognition and alarm, when cherished deceptions and illusions of love—frequently self-love—are stripped away. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Translated by William Weaver, Archivald Colquhoun, and Peggy Wright.