In 1964, with the stories of Gogol's Wife, New Directions introduced English language readers to the indelibly strange Italian master Tommaso Landolfi. Each tale is more astonishing than the next (what with a sacrilegious ape and an inflatable wife), though the stories are all delivered in a smooth and oddly decorous way. Casting its spell, this combination of the outré and the well-mannered unnerves the reader. The stories' duality is the stuff of nightmares, though the author's real nightmare, according to his champion Italo Calvino, is 'that nothingness does not exist.