Catastrophe

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. (Mar.)