After World War II, still in uniform and having been in a Japanese POW camp, Van der Post arrived in Zurich where his wife was studying with Carl Jung's mistress, Toni Wolff. Van der Post met Jung and an unlikely friendship ensued, based at first on a common love of Africa (van der Post's native continent.) The book explores Jung the man with rich doses of Van der Post's own narrative and subjectivity. It is unusually vivid, non-analytic, yet deep. The era of the end of the War and emerging Cold War helps set Jung in a meaningful context. Van der Post resonates powerfully with Jung's emphasis on dreams, which seems surprising in a man of action, but the depth he achieves in exploring some of Jung's well-known dreams is rewarding. He also catches some of the man's faults and foibles, so the tone, while idealizing on the whole, has a convincing precision of detail. The two men, author and subject, share a deep passion for the religious (as well as similar Reformed roots) and so the reader is drawn into a passionate dialogue about good and evil, God, the collective unconscious, war, racism, and other fascinating themes of Jung's work. Van der Post illuminates Jung's work without getting into the scholarly or pedantic mode, and brings the world of Jung's time to bear on our understanding of the man and his work. In addition to Jung, other members of the Zurich coterie are portrayed with spirited appreciation. Highly recommended.
