Dino Buzzati, (born October 16, 1906, Belluno, Italy—died January 28, 1972, Rome), Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, and novelist, internationally known for his fiction and plays.

Buzzati began his career on the Milan daily Corriere della Sera in 1928. His two novels of the mountains, written in the style of traditional realism, Barnabò delle montagne (1933; “Barnabus of the Mountains”) and Il segreto del bosco vecchio (1935; “The Secret of the Ancient Wood”), introduced the Kafkaesque surrealism, symbolism, and absurdity that suffused all of his writing.

The novel generally considered Buzzati’s finest, Il deserto dei Tartari (1940; The Tartar Steppe), is a powerful and ironic tale of garrison troops at a frontier military post, poised in expectancy for an enemy who never comes and unable to go forward or retreat.