The author, a Viennese Jew who fought with the Free French Forces in Italy, returned from war physically wounded and spiritually devastated—trapped in what he calls “a black hole,” exiled from himself. The book traces his brutal trajectory: flight from Austria after the Anschluss, combat at Monte Cassino, serious injury, and paralyzing depression while living with his Parisian in-laws. Grunwald became a student of Gurdjieff, who materializes here through physical details: a bald skull “shiny as a billiard ball,” eyes radiating “intense affliction” along with “ironic malice.” He called prospective students “parasites” and presided over elaborate dinners where participants toasted a hierarchy of “idiots.” Gurdjieff compared his teaching to “onion soup with onion” in a wartime world of ersatz substitutes. Grunwald simultaneously managed a large fruit estate in Touraine, sold apples at Les Halles at night, and navigated domestic catastrophes when his mother-in-law discovered his secret spiritual life. His attempts to share Gurdjieff’s teachings mostly failed—his sister, brought uninvited to Gurdjieff’s table, left “in a gloomy mood, having understood nothing,” and a traumatized doctor demanded proof of “Mr. G’s ‘work’ ideas” in the form of the resurrection of his child. The teachings offered no escape from ordinary life—only a more conscious way to inhabit it. This is a difficult, rewarding book that resists easy consumption. Grunwald writes with unusual psychological precision about a transformation that happened slowly, through years of ordinary life rather than mystical breakthroughs. The prose is slightly formal and occasionally awkward, suggesting the author’s trilingual status. Readers seeking systematic instruction in Gurdjieff’s teachings should look elsewhere, but those willing to approach spiritual teaching obliquely, through one man’s stubborn, intimate account, will find something rare. The double life Grunwald describes (harvesting apples by day, learning sacred dances by night) makes the teachings feel simultaneously precious and practical, transmissible yet fragile.
