Catastrophe and Other Stories
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- 69,00 kr
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- 69,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
These stories show how strange and unexpected events can creep into everyday life and draw ordinary people towards mystery, disquiet and, ultimately, catastrophe. This volume brings together twenty of the best stories written by Dino Buzzati - author of the celebrated novel The Tartar Steppe and one of the most original voices in twentieth-century literature - stories which show the Italian master's taste for the bizarre and the humorous, and for exploring the darker recesses of the human psyche. From `The Collapse of the Baliverna', where a man is racked with guilt at the thought that he might have been responsible for the loss of many lives, to `The Epidemic', which describes the spread of a "state influenza" contracted only by people who don't step into line with the government, and `Terror at the Scala', where the higher echelons of Milan society are gripped with the fear of an impending revolution - these stories show how strange and unexpected events can creep into everyday life and draw ordinary people towards mystery, disquiet and, ultimately, catastrophe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 20 riveting stories in Buzzati's collection feature characters caught up mostly in the cruel twists of Kafkaesque fate. In the title tale, the narrator, aboard a traveling train, passes through towns full of people visibly alarmed at some horror that remains beyond his powers of perception. "Seven Floors" tells of a sanatorium patient who is moved progressively despite his relatively good health and protests from the minimal care to the terminal patient ward, while "The Opening of the Road" concerns a group traveling along an undeveloped roadway who discover that their destination gets farther away as they travel toward it. Some of Buzzati's stories have the delicacy of fairy tales, including "Humility," the poignant account of a hermit's encounter with a clergyman whose extraordinary humility proves to be at odds with his true identity. Other stories have the visceral thrust of horror fiction, among them "The Egg," in which a mother's protectiveness toward her child manifests as a lethal supernatural force, and "The Monster," in which a governess's discovery of a terrifying entity in her employer's attic makes her wonder "might other houses, other towns, not hold similar horrors?" Buzzati's varied and immensely satisfying stories will appeal to readers receptive to the possibility of the bizarre behind the banal.