Name: The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories
SKU: 59269862
Price: 24.40 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Dino Buzzati

portada The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories

Type

Physical Book

Author

Dino Buzzati

Translated by

Lawrence Venuti

Illustrated by

Lawrence Venuti

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Year

2025

Language

English

Pages

368

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

205 x 125 x 23 (mm)

Weight

0.37 kg.

ISBN13

9781681378671

Synopsis "The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories"

Poe and Kafka meet The Twilight Zone in this anthology of fifty fantastical tales, many of them reflecting the political and social energies of the time, by an Italian master of the short story. The modern Italian writer Dino Buzzati wrote a huge body of short fiction, several hundred pieces, spanning a forty-year period. They offer a remarkable inventory of fantastic premises and tropes, international in the reach of their geographical settings, at times commenting on Italian issues but usually reflecting the worldwide horrors, catastrophes, and fanaticisms that characterized the twentieth century. A journalist for much of his life, Buzzati was adept at turning current events into fantasies that depicted social and political nightmares. He challenged the ideological complacencies of his era in accessible stories that solicit the reader's vicarious response, mixing sentiment, humor, and tragedy. Here Poe and Kafka meet Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Lawrence Venuti presents a retrospective anthology that ranges from Buzzati's first publications to texts written as he was dying of cancer. Buzzati's own book-length selections are sampled, so that previously untranslated stories join new versions of classics like "Seven Floors," an absurdist tale of a patient fatally caught in hospital bureaucracy; "Panic at La Scala," where, fearful of a left-wing revolution, the Milanese bourgeoisie are imprisoned at the opera house; and "Appointment with Einstein," in which the scientist encounters a gas station attendant who is the Angel of Death. Venuti's crisp translations re-create Buzzati's technique of making the fantastic seem frighteningly plausible, establishing unreal worlds that disrupt dominant notions of what is real. The Bewitched Bourgeois is a definitive gathering of Buzzati's work in short fiction.

Dino Buzzati

(Author)

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Dino Buzzati (1906-1972) was a prominent Italian writer, journalist, and painter, known for his ability to blend magical realism with elements of the fantastic and the existential. His literary style is characterized by a deep analysis of the human condition, often addressing themes such as loneliness, fate, and time. Buzzati was an influential figure in 20th-century Italian literature.

Among his most famous works is The Tartar Steppe (1940), an emblematic novel of existentialism that reflects the endless wait and the fight against inertia. His literary legacy also includes short stories and tales that explore the absurd and the symbolic, establishing him as one of the great masters of contemporary narrative.

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