Book "Waiting for the Barbarians" by John Coetzee

South African writer John M. Coetzee is perhaps the most enigmatic of all Nobel laureates, a man who dedicated his Nobel lecture to Robinson Crusoe, a man whose name has long been a mystery. In Waiting for the Barbarians, a small town on the edge of an unnamed empire is enthused by the news of an imminent attack by barbarians from the frontier deserts.