A Love Affair

Dino Buzzati, Joseph Green

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Paperback

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English

NYRB Classics
20 June 2023

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Accomplished in his career but unaccomplished in love, a middle-aged architect is torn apart by his obsession with an enigmatic young woman in this delicately told story of desire and abjection by a titan of Italian literature.

Accomplished in his career but unaccomplished in love, a middle-aged architect is torn apart by his obsession with an enigmatic young woman in this delicately told story of desire and abjection by a titan of Italian literature.

Antonio Dorigo is a successful architect in Milan, nearing fifty, who has always been afraid of women. A regular at an upscale brothel for years, he mourns the lack of close female companionship in his life. One afternoon, the madam at the brothel introduces Tonio to ""a new girl,"" Laide. Tonio sees nothing especially remarkable about her, though it intrigues him that she dances at La Scala and also at a strip club, and yet in a very short time he becomes completely obsessed with her.

Laide leads Antonio on, confounds him, uses and humiliates him, treats him tenderly from time to time, lies to him, makes no apologies to him, and he loves her ever more. This helpless and hopeless love, he feels, is what he is, even as it prevents him from ever seeing Laide for who she is. Because Who is she? is the question at the heart of Buzzati's clear-eyed and darkly comic tale of infatuation.

Is A Love Affair a love story or is it a story of anything but love? Buzzati's novel, with its psychological subtleties, vivid cityscapes, unsettling comedy, and compassion, keeps the reader guessing till the end.

By: Dino Buzzati, Joseph Green
Imprint: NYRB Classics
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 127mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781681377124
ISBN 10: 1681377128
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 20 June 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dino Buzzati (1906-1972) was an Italian journalist, artist, and author. A gifted artist as well as writer, Buzzati was the author of five novels, numerous short stories and poems, a children's book, and a comic book, Poem Strip (published by NYRB Classics). Joseph Green was a translator of Italian literature.

Reviews for A Love Affair

“I discovered the bard of nervousness last week, and I confess I feel a bit nervous about recommending him. . . . [Buzzati’s stories] portray delicate psychologies, and are themselves psychologically delicate, full of premonitions and subtle turns. . . . Buzzati’s prose can have a hard brightness, like the glazed eyes of a fever patient.” —Katy Waldman, The New Yorker