The book is set in an imaginary country similar in a vague way to Italy. The hero, heir of an old aristocratic family is sent to the southern border as an observer in a rundown fortress of another age. The country has been at war for 300 years with the mysterious country of Farghestan but no hostility has taken place in ages. Now the two lands simply ignore each other in a cold atmosphere of denial. The book is fully built on an expectation; expectation of an event that the reader senses but that doesn’t come; allegory of some sort of the Phony War of 1940, when France feared a German attack that wouldn’t come; as weeks elapsed the country slowly sought refuge in the illusion that the war was unreal. Yet the story does not work well. The reader has a difficult time sympathizing with the hero that appears artificial and fake in his emotions and hesitations. Too many sentences clutter the pages; although quite beautiful they are often senseless and useless in the progression of the plot. I was quickly bored and waited with anguish not for THE EVENT but for the end of the book.
