WFTB

 Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee is deliberately set in an unnamed, fictional frontier settlement of an unspecified “Empire.”

Geographically, it’s not tied to a real place, but there are strong clues:

• The setting resembles a remote outpost on the edge of a desert or steppe
• Many readers see parallels with Central Asia, North Africa, or the fringes of empires like the Roman Empire or colonial regimes
• The landscape—arid plains, nomadic “barbarian” peoples, and a distant imperial center—feels broadly like regions around the Eurasian степpe belt or desert frontiers

Coetzee intentionally keeps it vague so the story works as a universal allegory about empire, colonialism, and power, rather than a specific historical location.

If you want, I can explain which real-world empires or regions most closely inspired the setting.