Waiting for the Barbarians

Has any fan of the novel or the movie read J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians? One can find influence on Coetzee's novel, mainly the idea of a place on a remote border waiting patiently for barbarian hordes to attack from the desert.

Fortunately the novel is practically different, being an allegory about the cultural shock between a supposedly-civilised empire and people considered inferior and dangerous for having a different lifestyle. Whereas Buzzati's novel is mainly concerned with the inner life, the idea of people wasting their lives waiting for something to happen, Coetzee's is more political, and for a novel written in 1980, it's prophetic of our post-9/11 world.

Whoever loved Buzzati's novel or Zurlini's adaptation should give this novel a try too. They'll jump into a world as beautiful and melancholy as the world of Drogo and the Bastiano Fortress.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.