CATASTROPHE (Art of the Story) Paperback – Deckle Edge, March 8, 2018

As others have noted, there's nothing quite like that little frisson of fear conveyed by a fine uncanny story. No one does it better than Buzzati, the Italian master of strange stories. If you like Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, or even Kafka, you will appreciate these gems. So many great ones here, my favorites being "The Landslide," about a reporter detailed out to get the scoop on a purported destructive one, yet increasingly frustrated at his inability to locate its whereabouts, and "Seven Floors," wherein a mildly ill patient reports to a sanitorium for healing. The story is filled with a quiet paranoia as our patient gradually comes to realize that there is something very strange about this hospital, even ominous.There are 20 stories in all, most of which convey a feeling of indefinable dread or strangeness. Dino Buzzati deserves to be better known in America. Maybe this collection will help. If you like these kinds of stories, there is a somewhat similar collection by Lewis Turco titled "The Museum of Ordinary People." The title story is one of the most unusual and quietly haunting stories I have ever read. Also, "The Uncanny Reader," edited by Marjorie Sandor, contains a variety of strange stories, a few well known, most not so much. It has just come out this year, I believe.

Dino Buzzati's short stories are all great. Strange, unsettling, poignant, lively, and written in a style where they become folktales. My original copy of Catastrophe was wrecked in a fire and I couldn't find a replacement, so I was THRILLED when this reissue came out. Siren and Restless Nights are also great collections. Buy all three!

My first visit to Italy was a bit strange. Trains always seem to run late and never on the platform expected, when I went to pick up my rental car they knew nothing about it and then all of a sudden they knew something about it and I wasn’t at all surprised to find it was delivered without a drop of gasoline. As the days went on, I got used to this approach to life and became very comfortable and relaxed during my visit.The stories in this book brought back that exact same feeling and approach to life. Whether on a hunt for a dragon, being moved between floors in a strange hospital, surviving a battle after an Easter egg hunt or finding money in the pockets of a perfectly tailored suit, the Italian approach to life comes through every story. Although that feeling remained the same throughout the book, the stories were as different from each other as night and day. Perfectly translated and easy to read.Enjoy!

It's a book, dudes!

Distinctly Kafkaesque, Italian surrealist Dino Buzzati’s 20 tales smack of the subtle horror depicted in The Twilight Zone, the TV series that aired during the late 1950s and early ’60s. Contemporaneously, Buzzati published his collection reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Did one genius influence the others, or was there some universal literary Age of Enlightenment redux two centuries later?“The Collapse of the Baliverna” details a young man fearing his harmless feat of bravado causes a medieval edifice to collapse, self-imposing a “mean variety of blackmail.”The title tale’s narrator aboard a train perceives villagers alarmed by something only they can know. “The farther north the train went, the larger the crowds became; and they were all going in the same direction, fleeing the danger toward which we were hurtling at such speed.” Arriving at his destination, the narrator “saw that the station was deserted, the platforms bare and empty, not a human being in sight.”“The Monster” is in the attic. Or is it? Ghitta “had discovered its secrets by chance and had not known how to keep them.”In “The Egg,” impoverished Gilda purloins access to an egg hunt reserved for the gentry, for her young child, Antonella. Gilda is enraged when her daughter is accused of stealing an egg given by another child. “Here was a mother offended and humiliated; sometimes an injustice suffered can unleash terrifying power,” bringing to mind analogies to Stephen King’s CARRIE.My favorite is “Seven Floors,” where “patients were divided into seven successive castes.” As physicians tell the patients their conditions worsen, the inmates move to sequential lower floors. On the first floor, Giovanni Corte “saw that the venetian blinds, in obedience to some mysterious command, were dropping slowly, shutting out the light.”Although I empathize with declining health (my own taking the express elevator down☺), I surmise this to be a metaphor for a society’s decline. Each generation feels its seventh-floor vigor is superior to forebears, though age acts as a gravitational pull to a lower level the aspirations of youth.This anthology incorporates existential essence, causing readers to question their own existentialism. We see each story differently, like viewing masterful art in a different light. These stories are to be treasured and enjoyed again, as the light of perception shifts.Dino Buzzati (1906–1972) was the Italian novelist of THE TARTAR STEPPE, LARGER THAN LIFE, and A LOVE AFFAIR. A journalist for Corriere della Sera, Buzzati published several anthologies.Reviewed for Bookreporter by L. Dean Murphy

I really liked this collection of oddball, eccentric little stories. Most were so fresh and vivid, with hints of fables, tall tales and the like - that I’ll be reading more Buzzati, no doubt. Quite enjoyable!

This is a great, strange little book. It scratches an itch that only a few other writers reach: Kafka, Borges, Steven Millhauser. Darkly funny, eerie stuff that sticks one of the tougher landings in fiction: leaving virtually everything unexplained, but nevertheless leaving the reader thoroughly satisfied (if unsettled). In that sense, you might also compare it to the "strange stories" of Robert Aickman."Catastrophe" is a good choice of a title story, as it works as a sort of thesis statement for the rest of the tales in the book. It is difficult to describe without giving too much away, so instead I will just say this: these stories inhabit the moment that you hear an unfamiliar siren in the night, or a rustling in the grass. Awareness of a threat without any understanding of just what that threat is---and certainly without any means of controlling it.Dino Buzzati should be better known in English-speaking countries. Read it and tell others about it so that Ecco will put out more translations of his works. Please and thank you.