[This book has no ISBN; Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-150400]
Tommaso Landolfi is one of Italy's greatest writers, and this volume represents his finest work of the past ten years.
Landolfi's universe is peopled by madmen, fantasists, talking animals, robots, anguished lovers—it is funny, sometimes horrifying, and always bewitching.
The title story, for instance, in the best science-fiction tradition, concerns the spaceship Cancerqueen, which whisks off to the moon a mad scientist and an equally deranged writer. But Cancerqueen herself is no model of mental health either, and in a hair-rising and riotous climax the three characters find their deserved ends. At once, "Cancerqueen", parodies and extends the methods of Poe and H. G. Wells.
Landolfi's writings recall Gogol for their sharp humor, Kafka for their sense of the fantastic, Borges for stylistic wit. But Landolfi's individuality and range have forced his critics to abandon all notions of critical categories and to designate him, simply, an original.
Titles within:
- A Note on Landolfi
- The Mute
- Hands
- Stefano's Two Sons
- Autumn
- Cancerqueen
- Fable
- Misdeal
- [Untitled]
- Looking
- A Family Chat
- At the Station
- Venetian Dialogue
- Week of Sun
- The Sword
- The Calculations of Probability
- "Night Must Fall"
- Shadows
