Elémire Zolla is a scholar, a critic, and a novelist whose wide-ranging oeuvre is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, originality, and an impressive knowledge of both Western and Eastern cultures. Zolla, who taught Anglo-American and comparative literature at La Sapienza University in Rome and at the University of Genoa, has written essays on such wide-ranging topics as late capitalist culture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, mysticism, alchemy, shamanism, esoteric doctrines, and orientalism. Early in his career, Zolla also published two novels, Minuetto all'inferno (Minuet in Hell, 1956) and Cecilia o la disattenzione (Cecilia or Inattentiveness, 1961). He subsequently abandoned the novel to become an internationally known essayist. In the 1990s he published collections of short texts, Uscite dal mondo (Exits from the World, 1992) and Lo stupore infantile (The Child's Wonder, 1994), that can be characterized as metaphysical travel narratives since they present meditative forays into a variety of cultures...