This book by the distinguished German thinker Ernst Jünger is a collection of sketch essays set during the Weimar Republic, balancing on the edge of a fictitious diary and a political manifesto. The lonely and courageous heart of an adventurer lives amid catastrophes, where the old values ​​and hierarchies of the bourgeois world are crumbling. The author's 'flaming dreamscapes' of the First World War lifted the curtain on a demonic world impenetrable to the daylight of reason. Thus, the dream, where the wondrous and magical are dreamed, becomes for Jünger a paradigm for interpreting the experience of reality. The state of modern civilization is a confused dream. The enigmatic images of the monotonous movement of technology, the symbolism of death, the invasion of destructive demonic forces into the bourgeois world—this entire 'night side' of life, described in detail in 'The Heart of an Adventurer,' is deeply connected not only to the experience of war, but also to life in the big city.
The second edition is supplemented by a translation of Jünger's essay 'Sicilian Letter to the Moonman' and a new afterword by the translator.