The success of his first book, Siddhartha, ensured the publication of six further books by Hesse of which this one, first appearing in 1956, is regarded today as one of his best The narrator of this allegorical tale travels through time and space in a search of ultimate truth. This pilgrimage to the East covers both real and imagined lands and takes place not only in our own time but also in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Fellow travelers are also both real and fictitious and include Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, and Baudelaire. Like Siddartha, Journey to the East is a timeless novel of broad appeal, particularly among younger readers, stemming from an affinity with the lasting effects of the author's own youthful rebellion against the strictures of a classical education and his pacifist instincts, combined with an easy lyricism and a well-composed symmetry of style.