Dino Buzzati

El coronel Sebastiano Procolo acaba d'heretar uns terrenys a la vall de Fondo. Entre les noves propietats hi ha el Bosc Vell, poblat d'arbres antiquíssims i llegendes meravelloses. Procolo té plans per explotar el territori; però els animals i esperits del bosc no hi estaran d'acord... "El secret del bosc vell" és una faula moderna sobre la necessitat d'entendre's amb el món que ens envolta.

The Attack on the Fort Sir Tatton Sykes Captain Isaiah Sellers Lady Blessington RMS. Titanic The Man Who Would Be King The Secret Life of Walter Mitty The Lottery The Girls in Their Sunnner Dresses The Furnished Room De Mortuis The Necklace [Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]( A Piece of Neus I See You Never Haircut Crossing into Poland War The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Tennessee's Partner [Araby]( The Drunkard The Lament Tickets, Please Eventide Old Red Cruel and Barbarous Treatment A Domestic Dilennna Christ in Flanders Love: Three Pages from a Sportsman's Book Love The Killers The Fly I Want to Knou Why The Adulterous Woman [A Rose for Emily]( A Good Man Is Hard to Find In the Penal Colony Through the Quinquina Glass The Bitch A Father-to-Be The Fight The Far and the Near The Sensible Thing A Christmas Memory Realpolitik The Sailor Boy's Tale Amy Foster The Killing of the Dragon Dermuche Disorder and Early Sorro•-w No Place for You, My Love 1 Write Goodbye, My Brother What Happened Noon Wine Blackberry Winter

Often likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

In search of food, Leander, King of the Bears, leads his subjects from their safe caves in the mountains of Sicily to the valley where they triumph over many enemies.

"[The author] brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, [he] illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence"--Amazon.com.

fantastique short-stories; "the fantastic element that lurks beneath the suface" (L. Venuti)