This is great fun – if perhaps getting a little wrapped up in itself by the end.
An anonymous reader keeps picking up books, becoming fascinated in the first chapter, before having the book lost, stolen, or discovering the whole thing is a mistranslation or forgery.
Calvino does an amazing job of writing a dozen absorbing first chapters with throwaway ease; the bits in between I wasn’t so sure about. It’s very “postmodern” in an obsessed-with-texts, the relationship between reader and writer etc. kind of way. Is this theme really the skeleton key to life? It’s pretty funny, but I get the feeling would be even funnier if all the characters weren’t cyphers.