One Book A Week Interbeing

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS 

VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. VALIS is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime. 

Originally published: 1981
Author: Philip K. Dick
Page count: 271
Genres: Postmodernism, Philosophical fiction, Science Fiction

“Your soul is the whole world.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Herman Hesse's classic novel has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers. In this story of a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate philosophies--Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Western individualism--into a unique vision of life as expressed through one man's search for meaning. 

Originally published: 1922
Author: Hermann Hesse
Page count: 152
Original language: German
Genres: Fiction, Psychological Fiction