Often likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

"Buzzati's take on military matters is ambiguous. He makes much of the elaborate system of passwords at the fort -- a system that leads to one officer's death -- or the coded music of bugle calls, as well as the way in which time itself is stratified and subdivided. . . But if this is satire, it's a satire on us all, conscripted to the fortress of our expectations, hoping by secret signals and the solace of routine to push time back from the battlements, even as they crumble." --Eric Ormsby, NY Sun

Undoubtedly a masterpiece . . . [Buzzati] has brought to life a universal man and cast his being in surrounding which are familiar to us all . . . It is a sublime book and Buzzati a master of the written word. --Sunday Times

迪諾·布紮蒂（Dino Buzzati，1906－1972），20世紀意大利著名作傢，同時也是記者和畫傢。他一生創作頗豐。二戰時曾以特派員身份赴非洲，看到埃塞俄比亞一望無際的荒涼景象後，開始構思《韃靼人沙漠》，1940年齣版，奠定瞭他的文壇地位，被博爾赫斯列入“私人藏書 ”，位居第六。其重要作品還有：《山裏的巴爾納博》《魔法外套》《神秘商店》《瓦爾·莫雷爾的奇跡》等。布紮蒂小說中的荒誕感和存在主義意蘊，讓他常被與卡夫卡、加繆聯係在一起。

劉儒庭，1941年生，河北人。譯審，意大利仁惠之星騎士。曾任新華社羅馬分社首席記者，中國意大利文學研究會常務理事。譯作有理論著作《開放的作品》《影子的門檻》，小說《已故的帕斯卡爾》《基督不到的地方》《為時已晚》《韃靼人沙漠》《米蘭之戀》，電影劇本《甜蜜的生活》《紅色沙漠》及詩歌《青春詩》等。