The Journey to the East
A Novel
ISBN10: 0312421680
ISBN13: 9780312421687
Trade Paperback
128 Pages
$18.00
In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah's Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims' ultimate destination is the East, the "Home of the Light," where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into open conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, H.H. bitterly blaming the other for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.
Reviews
Praise for The Journey to the East
"[Hesse's] simplicity belies galaxies of knowledge in motion—history, theology, psychology, philosophy. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Gide, Thomas Mann rightly called Hesse a master."—Life
"More than anything else that Hesse has written. [The Journey to the East] resembles Kafka."—The Christian Science Monitor