The Journey to the East

Hermann Hesse

TRANSLATED BY HILDA ROSNER

First English edition (3rd impression), 1970, Jacket design by Keith Cunningham

There are minor signs of wear on the dust jacket: a slight yellowing of the front and spine, and a few scratch marks, all hardly noticeable. The book itself, however, is in impeccable condition; the binding is tight and the pages are clean.

In The Journey to the East, an allegorical novel, the narrator travels through Time and Space in search of ultimate Truth. This pilgrimmage to the 'East' is akin to Yeats's Byzantium, emblematic of a state of mind, and, although the journey is across an imaginary land, it also embraces Europe -- and takes place not only in our own century but in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well.

The members of the League, by whom the narrator is accompanied, include both real and fictitious people -- Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy and Baudelaire. The disappearance of their servant Leo causes disruption and brings despair to he narrator: Hesse shows that Leo is the most humble member of the group yet the most important, and that his rediscovery is essential to the narrator's self-fulfilment.

Hermann Hesse won international renown for his major contribution to modern literature. His novels -- distinguished for their lyricism, symmetry of style, and for the depth and originality of his thought -- have a wide contemporary appeal, particularly among young readers who see a close affinity between their own self-conflicts and ideals and those expressed in Hesse's writings. His books were denounced by the Nazis, but in 1946 he achieved world recognition on being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.