Dino Buzzati Books

'Undoubtedly a masterpiece, a sublime book' Sunday TimesA dark and beautiful tale full of pain and longing, introduced by Tim Parks

A wonderful story for children and an allegory for adults about the absurdity of war, presented here with an introduction and guide to the text by Lemony Snicket. Starving after a harsh winter, the bears descend from the mountains in search of food and invade the valley below, where they face fierce opposition from the army of the Grand Duke of Sicily. After many battles, scrapes and dangers, the bears' reign is established over the land, but their victory comes at a price.

At age 82, Clifton Fadiman continues his prolific publishing career, here presenting 62 of the world's best short stories from 16 countries. His criteria? "Each story had to be both interesting and of high literary merit." Fadiman fulfills both requirements and much more, offering a cornucopia of superior 20th-century writers that includes Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Isaac Babel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever, Sean O'Faolain, Graham Greene, Robert Penn Warren, Colette, John Updike, Donald Barthelme, and James Thurber. (Regrettably, J. D. Salinger is not included due to lack of permission.) Here is a truly remarkable collection of this century's short stories that readers from all over the world will read with delight.

Accomplished in his career but unaccomplished in love, a middle-aged architect is torn apart by his obsession with an enigmatic young woman in this delicately told story of desire and abjection by a titan of Italian literature. Antonio Dorigo is a successful architect in Milan, nearing fifty, who has always been afraid of women. A regular at an upscale brothel for years, he mourns the lack of close female companionship in his life. One afternoon, the madam at the brothel introduces Tonio to “a new girl,” Laide. Tonio sees nothing especially remarkable about her, though it intrigues him that she dances at La Scala and also at a strip club, and yet in a very short time he becomes completely obsessed with her. Laide leads Antonio on, confounds him, uses and humiliates him, treats him tenderly from time to time, lies to him, makes no apologies to him, and he loves her ever more. This helpless and hopeless love, he feels, is what he is, even as it prevents him from ever seeing Laide for who she is. Because Who is she? is the question at the heart of Buzzati’s clear-eyed and darkly comic tale of infatuation. Is A Love Affair a love story or is it a story of anything but love? Buzzati’s novel, with its psychological subtleties, vivid cityscapes, unsettling comedy, and compassion, keeps the reader guessing till the end.

Larger than Life is a 1960 novel by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati. It tells the story of a scientist who becomes entangled with a large electronic machine in which the woman he loves is reincarnated.

This collection is a companion to the long-established and highly successful Modern Short Stories One and its essential aims are the same: to offer stories of high literary quality which, though written for adults, can be enjoyed and appreciated by adolescents. The fifteen stories included are by distinguished writers from Africa, America, Australia, India, Ireland, Italy and Great Britain; and within their artistic context several of them deal with the special personal and social concerns of society today.The collection includes stories by the likes of Dorothy Parker, Maeve Binchy, Garrison Keillor, Peter Carey, Flannery O'Connor and Nadine Gordimer.

Fusing elements of fantasy with social commentary, this anthology showcases the work of Dino Buzzati, an Italian master of short stories. Spanning four decades, it reflects the political and social turmoil of the twentieth century through imaginative tales that address global horrors and Italian issues alike. With a blend of humor, tragedy, and surrealism, Buzzati's stories, including classics and previously untranslated pieces, challenge ideological norms while creating unsettling yet plausible realities. Lawrence Venuti’s translations capture the essence of Buzzati's unique storytelling style.

Zweisprachig: Italienisch & Deutsch bilingue: italiano & tedesco

French

Sono raccolte in questo volume tre opere tra le più significative della produzione di Dino Buzzati: i romanzi Il deserto dei Tartari (1940) e Un amore (1963), oltre alla celebre "auto-antologia" Sessanta racconti (1958). Testi molto diversi per tipologia e tematiche, che riportano in vita il mondo allegorico ed esistenziale dello scrittore, in cui il senso della prova è sfida con l'ignoto e con il destino. Tre tappe fondamentali nel percorso dell'autore, che, tra i tanti capolavori, ben esemplificano la coerenza e la varietà di una parabola artistica che - come ha scritto Giulio Carnazzi - "si presenta con un'insolita ricchezza di illuminazioni: sulla vita e la morte, sulle magie che scorrono nel tessuto delle nostre abitudini quotidiane."