About the Author

Dino Buzzati was born in Italy in 1906. After receiving a law degree from the University of Milan, he worked as a reporter and later as special correspondent and editor for the Corriere della Sera. His literary career began in 1933 with the publication of Barnabas of the Mountains and The Secret of the Old Forest; however, it was not until publication of The Tartar Steppe in 1940 and The Seven Messengers in 1942 that he received proper recognition in the mainstream of contemporary European literature. His works have been translated into many languages. Buzzati died in Milan in 1972.

Reviews

A strange and haunting novel, an eccentric classic
*J.M. COETZEE*

It is not often that a masterpiece falls into one's hands. But The Tartar Steppe is undoubtedly a masterpiece, a sublime book, and Buzzati a master of the written word
* * Sunday Times * *

There are names that the coming generations will not resign themselves to forget. Surely one of them is that of Dino Buzzati
*JORGE LUIS BORGES*

A beautiful, masterly novel that shimmers like a mirage, bringing into sharp focus the rise and fall of our ambitions and the pitiless erosion of time. It is the story of one Giovanni Drogo - yet how many of us will be stricken to recognise something of ourselves in him?
*YANN MARTEL*

The Tartar Steppe is a nightmare, a comedy of errors, a beautiful and anguished fable, a call to resistance against folly, the inspired assurance that one last act may justify our lifelong struggle to remain human
*ALBERTO MANGUEL*