An adolescent boy sails to the remote monasteries and hermitages of Mount Athos. His spiritual and erotic wanderings in the picturesque surroundings of the Holy Mountain take both the author and the reader on a journey of self-discovery. Augiéras described Athos as a place where you find everything within yourself , and the experiences in this book as a sojourn in the Land of the Spirits according to the strictest Buddhist or Pythagorean Orthodoxy. Depicted variously as an anti-Christian nomad, a barbarian in the West and a madman, Augiéras is one of France s greatest underground writers.