The Journey to the East

Paperback, 128 pages

English language

Published Feb. 1, 2003 by Picador.

ISBN:
978-0-312-42168-7
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4 stars (1 review)

14 editions

reviewed The Journey to the East by Herman Hesse

An appetiser for Hesse’s other works?

4 stars

Slightly misleading with the promise of a ‘novel,’ this more novella-like piece was pretty good considering the reused wander-to-discover-enlightenment bit…

Initially this book seemed to offer something more than the last two encounters I’ve had with Hesse; that is, by substituting his stereotypical wanderer with a set of wanderers. The company ranging from Xenophon, Plato and Pythagoras to Don Quixote and Baudelaire… A bizarre mix, except you don’t get much out of any of these characters other than being aware they are involved with the League—unfortunate.

It also seems like a prerequisite of Hesse’s characters to be loomed over by some body of authority? A league, a monastery, an order… The League in this case makes a good medium to make a statement about leadership through the use of Leo (the only other substance bearing character other than H.H, Hesse’s pseudo-autobiographical representative).

In honesty, this would have been a disastrously …

Subjects

  • Literary
  • Fiction / Literary
  • Fiction
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Literature: Classics