A classic tale about a young man’s search for meaning after the insanity of World War I. Larry Darrell gives up wealth and the woman he loves in order to seek meaning through religion. What follows is a journey of discovery to Paris and India, where the Hindu Upanishads might point him toward the light.
Written in 1944, this novel is full of excruciating earnestness. Larry’s approach to the Platonic concept of temperance is starchy in the extreme. Still, his journey is worth following. His is of one of the oldest quests in the history of humanity—the quest for ultimate knowledge—and the eventual resolution avoids hackneyed or standard summations. Reviewed on Dec. 9, 2021