The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati

'It is not often that a masterpiece falls into one's hands. But The Tartar Steppe is undoubtedly a masterpiece, a sublime book and Buzzati a master of the written word.' John Keegan Sunday Times

Published in Italy in 1945, The Tartar Steppe is at once a gripping story, a scathing indictment 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.