A while back I finished Dino Buzzati's The Singularity, which I remember saying I definitely needed to read again because I wasn't quite certain what happened at the end. Last night I completed Buzzati's The Stronghold, which I'll also certainly again, although this time more surely because I liked it so much. This was another in the New York Review Books Classics series, which features works which simply haven't been given been given - or are no longer being given - the attention they deserve. I'm very happy to have stumbled across this series, as I've liked most of them immensely. The Stronghold (originally released as The Tartar Steppes) tells the story of Giovanni Drogo, an ambitious soldier sent to Fortezza Bastiani, a remote fortification in the mountains. He initially plans to leave immediately, then agrees to stay for four months for bureaucratic reasons, but then never actually leaves. Drogo keeps waiting for heroism to find him in the form of an expected invasion, which never arrives (at least the heroism). As a man whose career is drawing to a close, with far more of a whimper than a bang, I can appreciate the metaphor. However, it much more than a metaphorical one trick pony, and the images that Buzzati painted of the Fortezza Bastiani will stay with me. Recommended.
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