The Tartar Steppe tells the story of Giovanni Drogo's lifelong wait for a war in which he can achieve glory.

For his first assignment, Lt. Drogo is posted at Bastiani, a remote fortress overlooking the desolate Tartar desert.

[6] In 1976 the novel was adapted into an homonymous film (known in English as The Desert of the Tartars)[7] by Italian director Valerio Zurlini and starring Jacques Perrin as Drogo with Max von Sydow as Ortiz and Vittorio Gassman as Filimore.

The novel was a major influence on South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee's 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians, the title of which is borrowed from Constantine P. Cavafy's poem of the same name.

[8] Other writers who have spoken of their indebtedness to the novel include Yann Martel, Alberto Manguel, and Tim Parks, who wrote the introduction to the 2000 Penguin edition.