If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer
Italo Calvino. The
postmodernist narrative, in the form of a
frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. 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 he or she is 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.
