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 ...