Italo's Italy

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know, once in a lifetime, you come across a book that doesn't impose anything on you, that doesn't force you to imagine anything, that starts like it is your story; and then, when you're halfway through it, you realise that you are actually living according to that book, that it is, in some strange, mysterious way, making you a part of its story and no matter how hard you try, you cannot separate your identity from that of the book . 'If On A Winter's Night A Traveller' is that book!

I won't gush over how beautifully it has been written or how poetic or philosophical it is. None of that hogwash! No! I think the best way I can describe my experience with this book is by forcing you to imagine something.

Imagine you're a food junky and you go to this amazing, new restaurant everyone's crazy about. You love the decor, you're impressed by the warmth of the waiting staff and on the menu, you find these amazingly exotic sounding, never-been-heard-of dishes that sound so tempting that you don't know where to start from! Almost on a whim, you order a random number on the menu, say No. 24, and the waiter brings this divine looking, absolutely heavenly to smell dish that makes your mouth water at first sight. Trembling with excitement, you dig your fork in and taste it for the first time. You've never tasted anything as good before! It's so delicious you want to build a house of it and live in it. However, just before you're about to take another bite, the waiter replaces it with another dish, equally exotic, equally divine to smell with an apology that what you tasted wasn't your order but that of the person on another table. Reluctantly, you allow the waiter to replace the dish before you but you find this one's even better. But just before you can take another bite, another waiter comes with the same apology and a different dish. This carries on for the whole night. You ought to be disappointed, angry and indignant instead, with every bite of a new dish, you find yourself more and more in love with the chef who cooked all these wonderful dishes. So what if you never got what you ordered for? At least the experience was worth it. And admit it, you actually enjoyed the tasting!

Yes, this has been my experience with 'If On A Winter's Night A Traveller' . The reading left me HUGELY HUNGRY for more but every story, every tale left me strangely satisfied and in awe of that wonderful author, Italo Calvino . And the funny thing is, the book was about me from the very beginning!

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