Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to sexual situations.

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.”

The novel begins with a declarative use of the second-person singular pronoun “you,” as the narrator directly addresses the audience, using an explicitly self-aware description of the audience reading the lines of Italo Calvino’s new book. From this first sentence, the novel purposefully transforms into a mirror reflecting the audience’s actions. The audience thus becomes a character in the book, immediately embedded in the narrator’s prose. The act of reading itself is the novel’s focus, and it instantly implicates the audience in this exploration.

“It is obvious that I am a subordinate.”

The narrator likewise uses “I” to refer to himself and acknowledges his diminished role within the text. Rather than just talking about his role in the context of this single story, the narrator declares his subordinate status, which is true of the entire novel. The narrator is subordinate to the broader idea of literature, to the abstract notion of books and fiction that he’s trying to explore. Like the man in the station, awaiting instruction, the narrator floats above the prose, searching for his purpose among the strangers in the