Often Likened to Kafka's The Castle, this great Italian novel, first published in 1945, is both a scathing criticism of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drago, who is posted to a remote fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe, the first line of defense against a rumored barbarian invasion. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni one day finds that years have passed, almost without his noticing, as he has come to share his fellow-soldiers' patient vigil. At last the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade - until the hour that the enemy begins massing on the desolate horizon...