Jonathan Livingston Seagull

This is Richard Bach’s most important book. He didn’t invent "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". He heard it all, wrote it down—and it completely changed his life. And now you can read this miraculous tale that, like no other book in the world, answers the most important questions: "Who are we?" "What are we doing here?" "Where are we going?" "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" can change your life, too.

A pilot named Richard Bach—the descendant of the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach, passionately devoted to his flying craft, and also the author of lesser-known novels—once, while walking along the California canal, heard the words "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." The voice that spoke those words made the pilot sit down at his table, replaying before his mind a kind of movie reel, which Richard Bach captured in words. The "movie reel" turned out to be incomplete. No matter how hard the writer tried to finish it on his own, nothing worked—until, eight years later, the same Voice dictated the continuation and the ending of the parable.

Richard Bach himself reported this version of how "the Seagull" appeared. Answering questions from countless readers who asked him to decode the story’s metaphysical meaning, he said he could add nothing to what had been written, because, unlike in novels, in "the Seagull" not a single line belongs to him.

People mocked Bach’s version, accused him of self-promotion and of trying to pad his pockets. Of course, today the climate for otherworldly transmissions has changed dramatically. Not only poems and parables, but whole "gospels" delivered to Earth by aliens have become commonplace. And yet "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" remains—just as it was—a solitary masterpiece, enchanting readers with its astonishing beauty, and—another thing—with a subtle sadness. This isn’t a memory of joy that has been lived and is gone; it is rather a sadness about a future boundless life—one you reach through dizzying and difficult flights…