Catastrophe

"Weird [and] wonderful" stories by a Strega Prize winner with "shades of Fellini, shades of Dickens, shades of the great Italian horror director Mario Bava" ( Los Angeles Times). From "The Epidemic," which traces the gradual effects of a "state influenza" that targets those who disagree with the government, to "The Collapse of the Baliverna," in which a man puzzles over whether a misstep on his part caused the collapse of a building, to "Seven Floors," which imagines a sanatorium where patients are housed on each floor according to the gravity of their illness and brilliantly highlights the ominous machinations of bureaucracy, Strega Prize–winning Italian writer Dino Buzzati's surreal, unsettling tales reckon with the struggle that lies beneath everyday interactions and the sometimes perverse workings of human emotions and desires, and, with wit and pathos, describe the small steps we take as individuals and as a society in our march toward catastrophe. In "twenty riveting stories" ( Publishers Weekly), Buzzati brings to vivid life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Catastrophe illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence, and feels as timely today as ever. "Each of these stories is steeped in terror . . . Judith Landry's vibrant translations render [Buzzati] at once witty and sinister." —Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times–bestselling author of The Namesake "Out of a gothic tale . . . Frightening, lyrical, and provocative." — The New York Times "[A] fantasist and moralist in the vein of Kafka [with] a bold inventive power that shows his kinship with such other unconventional spirits as Poe, Gogol, Borges, Donald Barthelme, and his countryman Italo Calvino." — Christian Science Monitor "Some of Buzzati's stories have the delicacy of fairy tales. . . Other stories have the visceral thrust of horror fiction. . . Buzzati's varied and immensely satisfying stories will appeal to readers receptive to the possibility of the bizarre behind the banal." — Publishers Weekly "An evocative collection that might pull the rug from under your feet." — Kirkus Reviews