"The Quest adapts the classical myth of the Argonauts to the desolate aftermath of post-war Germany: seven strangers make a pilgrimage to the convent of Anaistaiendorf. Archetypal yet unique, these figures create a dramatic narrative: Friedrich, the abandoned, nihilistic soldier; the actor Albrecht Beifuss, faithful but despairing of new life; Irene von Dörfer, defiled by the madness of war; the Levi-Jeschowers, mourning their children murdered in the concentration camps; and Ewald Hauteville, determined to release his sister, Lotte, from her grief, lust, and madness. Synchronizing the Jewish and Christian scriptures with Eastern philosophy and Greek and Germanic mythologies, Langässer reckons with the horror of the Holocaust, the relentless, global destruction of life and dispersal of disease, and the unprecedented terror of nuclear conflict. Critically regarded as one of the best German efforts to confront the post-war moral burden, The Quest is a powerful, markedly complex novel, certain to stir the conscience"--