The Tartar Steppe
1940 • 290 pages

Ratings14

Average rating4.1

15

Young Giovanni arrives at the bleak border area of the Tartar Steppe where he is to take an assignment at Fort Bastiani. As his length of service stretches from months into years, he continues to wait for the enemy to advance across the desert. Despite, or because, they tell him he is free to leave, he waits for one great and glorious endeavour.


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This is b l e a k. I followed up a stretch of 10 middle grades fiction books with an absolutely upsetting novel about a man marooned for his entire life at a fort of no importance. This is beautifully written though. I'd recommend it if you liked Calvino or maybe Borges.

September 25, 2021
November 29, 2021