In its third chapter, the protagonist takes an unnamed girl - whose body he has been ritually washing, through a desert to reunite her with her people.
This novel's narrator was based on the ambitious soldier Giovanni Drogo, a character from Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe. Its unnamed narrator attempts to decode mysterious messages on wooden slips to learn about the title figures, though he finds that there is no way to interpret them. In its third chapter, the protagonist takes an unnamed girl - whose body he has been ritually washing, through a desert to reunite her with her people. Upon return, he finds that the warrant officer Mandel from the (*) Third Bureau has appeared to torture him. This novel opens with the narrator analyzing Colonel Joll's sunglasses, who brutalizes civilians to gather intelligence about a supposed impending attack. For 10 points, name this short novel about an unnamed magistrate guarding an empire's fringe, a work of J.M. Coetzee.
This novel's narrator was based on the ambitious soldier Giovanni Drogo, a character from Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe.
Waiting for the Barbarians