A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East

This exquisitely beautiful novel by National Book Award winner László Krasznahorkai—perhaps his most serene and poetic work— describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite the difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery (described in poetic detail) as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area (the underground layers revealed beneath a bed of moss, the transportation of cypress-tree seeds by the wind, feral foxes and stray dogs meandering outside the monastery’s walls),making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being