Hermann Hesse's timelessly brilliant novels have a wide appeal, particularly among youthful readers who see a close affinity between their own struggles and ideals and those expressed in Hesse's writings.

In The Journey to the East, a haunting allegorical novel, the narrator travels through time and the external and internal worlds in search of ultimate Truth. Although the pilgrimage to the "East" 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 narrator is accompanied by his fellow-members of the League, which includes both real and fictitious characters – Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Baudelaire and Leo, the lowliest member of the group yet, paradoxically, also the most important.

One of Hesse's best works, The Journey to the East is closest in conception to his Nobel Prize-winning novel The Glass-Bead Game (Magister Ludi).

Introductory chapter by Timothy Leary.