The Stronghold

Buzzati’s most well-known novel, The Tartar Steppe (1945), receives a fine new translation with an improved title from Venuti. Giovanni Drogo, a lieutenant in the Italian army, is given his first assignment at the remote Fortezza Bastiani, nestled between mountains and desert. His solitary horseback ride away from his childhood home fills him with increasing anxiety as he travels further from civilization. Drogo has high hopes for a decorated career, but at Fortezza Bastiani, he discovers a strange phenomenon: everyone there is convinced the outpost will one day save the Italian kingdom from the Tartars, a legendary enemy from the north that threatens the Fortezza. Whether or not the threat will ever materialize causes agony for Drogo and the rest of the soldiers, who repeat their stringent duties day in and day out with no change in the desolate landscape. Buzzati manages to make the reader deeply invested in the soldiers’ uncertainty and dread, even as he throws down a blistering critique of fascism (of Drogo: “He proudly savored his determination to stay at the Fortezza, the bitter taste of abandoning small but dependable joys for a greater good whose duration was lengthy but uncertain”). This passes the test of time with flying colors. (May)