Gogols Wife and Other Stories [Paperback]

Tommaso Landolfi (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (December 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811200809
• ISBN-13: 978-0811200806
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Funny!, May 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gogols Wife and Other Stories (Paperback)

Landolfi has been called "the Italian Kafka" (according to the blurb on the back of the book), no doubt because of the surrealistic elements in his short stories. For example, Landolfi imagines Gogol's wife as an inflatible creature to be manipulated according to Gogol's will. In "Dialogue of the Greater Harmonies," a man learns a nonexistent language and feels cheated that the poems he has written in it can never really be shared. Through his stories, Landolfi shares deeper concerns about the importance of relationships and language and communication. It is unfortunate that his work is not better known.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An advise from Italy: read Landolfi!, March 19, 2002

By 

S. Romano (Partinico, Sicily Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gogols Wife and Other Stories (Paperback)

A strange, intelligent author today little known even here in Italy, Tommaso Landolfi wrote several wonderfully weird and surrealistic stories, oscillating among irony, nightmare and fear. Believe me: a great writer, and not a "great italian" writer, but a great one, period. If you love Calvino and Cortazar and, in general, the fantastic literature, you'll miss something if you don't know Landolfi.