Books like The Lost Steps

The Lost Steps is a colourful allegoric tale of an attempted escape from the routine existence on the treadmill of modern civilization.The main hero sees himself as Sisyphus futilely rolling the huge boulder of his fruitless responsibilities from day to day and he desperately wishes to flee this fate……I asked myself whether, in bygone days, men had longed for bygone days as I, this summer morning, longed for certain ways of life that man had lost forever.So at the first possibility he embarks on the journey fabulously echoing the legendary wanderings of Ulysses…With its cargo of bellowing bulls, coops of chickens, pigs running about the deck under the hammock of the Capuchin and getting tangled up in his rosary of seeds, the song of the Negress cooks, the laughter of the Greek diamond-hunter, the prostitute in her mourning nightgown bathing in the prow, the guitar-players making music for the sailors to dance, this ship of ours made me think of Bosch’s Ship of Fools.And he boldly travels through the symbioses of cultures, concoction of customs, beliefs and superstitions… And there are many parallels with Homer's Odyssey: Ruth is Penelope, Mouche – Circe, Rosario – Nausicaä and even the one-eyed dog is called Polyphemus.But dates were still losing figures. In headlong flight the years emptied, ran backward, were erased, restoring calendars, moons, changing centuries numbered in three figures to those of single numbers. The gleam of the Grail has disappeared, the nails have fallen from the Cross, the moneychangers have returned to the temple, the Star of Bethlehem has faded, and it is the year 0, when the Angel of the Annunciation returned to heaven.This journey through space is also a journey through time – the protagonist travels as if he goes through the epochs until he arrives to the fountainhead of humankind, pristine garden of Genesis. And he wants to stay in this primordial settlement of lotus-eaters for good and begins to compose threnody of Ulysses descending to the land of the dead…But the destiny of Ulysses is to return so the civilization tries to claim him back…The modern times don’t suit ancient heroes – exposed to contemporary civilization they wither.