The Stronghold

A glory-starved soldier spends his life awaiting an absent, long-expected enemy in this influential Italian classic of existentialism, now newly translated and with its originally intended title restored. At the start of Dino Buzzati's The Stronghold, newly commissioned officer Giovanni Drogo has just received his first posting: the remote Fortezza Bastiani. North of this stronghold are impassable mountains; to the south, a great desert; and somewhere out there is the enemy, whose attack is imminent. This is the enemy that Lieutenant Drogo has been sent to draw out of his lair, to defeat once and for all, returning home in triumph. And yet time passes, and where is the enemy? As the soldiers in the fortress await the foretold day of reckoning, they succumb to inertia, and though death occurs, it is not from bravery. Decades pass. A lifetime passes. Drogo, however, still has his lonely vigil to keep. Buzzati is one of the great Italian writers of the twentieth century, renowned for his