The Passionate Journey is most definitely a work of its time. Completed at the close of the first of the world wars, the story unfolded in these brilliant engravings is typical of the feelings of contemporary young Europeans. Disillusionment and disgust with the results of the war, coupled with a general scepticism about Governments and the authorities, and an eagerness to bring about change in society, became pressing themes in Masereel's life and in his work. As a communist sympathiser he detested the capitalism of his industrial environment and repeatedly reflected upon its evils in illustrations done for communist publications, and in work for his own books. Of course, it is these timeless themes which have made The Passionate Journey so long-lived, whilst his rebel-without-a-cause hero has been celebrated in parallel expressions over the years in books and films (the Beat poets, James Dean, Marlon Brando), or more recently in the bad-boy rock band culture of these past twenty years. ... [This] Redstone Press edition - a well-edited and sharply printed book in a dramatic black and red dustwrapper over boards, with Thomas Mann's introduction.