`A beautifully written novel.'


THE NEW YORKER


`Buzzati is one of the few who have come close to rewriting a whole Kafka parable.'


TIME MAGAZINE


`Despite its obvious affinities with Kafka's The Castle, it is a serener and more immediately rewarding book, excellently translated.'


THE TIMES

Published in Italy in 1945, The Tartar Steppe is a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on human thirst for glory. Young Giovanni Drogo is posted to remote Fort Bastiani, overlooking the Tartar Steppe. At the furthest fringes of the steppe there is sometimes mist, sometimes shimmering as of mountains, but no one knows what lives there. Drogo wants to leave as soon as he arrives, but the place exerts a gradual enchantment. When for Lieutenant Drogo the years have passed taking youth, thirst, strength, at last there is action, the enemy begins to take shape . . .

Dino Buzzati condenses into this novel the bitter wisdom of dissent brewed during the long years of Mussolini's adventures in Africa and Europe. It is one of the great books of World War II.