Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels 

The eponymous hero undergoes a journey of self-realisation. The story centers upon Wilhelm’s attempt to escape what he views as the empty life of a bourgeois businessman. After a failed romance with the theatre, Wilhelm commits himself to the mysterious Tower Society. The novel has had a significant impact on European literature. Romantic critic and theorist Friedrich Schlegel judged it to be of comparable importance for its age to the French Revolution and the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Arthur Schopenhauer cited Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as one of the four greatest novels ever written (Wikipedia)