The Tartar Steppe

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...<br/><br/>Young Giovanni Drogo is posted to remote Fort Bastiani, overlooking the Tartar Steppe. Published in Italy in 1939, this story is an indictment of military life and a meditation on human thirst for glory. In what is one of the greatest Italian novels of the century, Buzzati's sinister, gripping story is the true heir of Kafka's THE CASTLE.