Reviews

Restless Nights by Dino Buzzati

zmorgason's review

dark funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

Secret obsessions, a destructive fixation. It's absurd to maintain the faith in an absurd world, but the straight path is the fastest route through the desert. Hope and doubt, sin and virtue, exaltation and despair, all become one along life's long continuum of experiences. I'm usually a bit cool on short fiction anthologies, but between Buzzati's fantastical worlds and Venuti's brilliant selection and translation, I fell deep into the folds of nearly every one, a total triumph of the form. 

jeffhall's review

3.0

I'm rapidly becoming a huge fan of Dino Buzzati's fiction, and Restless Nights is an excellent introduction to his stories in translation. Buzzati's unique outlook has echoes of Jorge Luis Borges, but Buzzati is his own man, and treats his subjects with considerably more compassion and sympathy than characters typically receive at the hands of the more cerebral Borges. Buzzati loves to throw emotional and philosophical conundrums at his protagonists, and the joy of reading his stories arises from the charming and creative resolutions that he devises for his challenging plots. Most of these pieces are quite short, but as with Borges, they are so well executed that there is no need for excess verbiage - Buzzati has tuned his stories perfectly, and delivers the goods elegantly, entertainingly, and (one might even say) ecstatically.

catpdx's review

3.0

Worth a read - there are some fun, surreal stories in this collection. They got a little weaker and a little more tiresome as they went on, unfortunately, but there's a gem here and there.