Corto Maltese enters the crossroads of magic and the occult, astrology and history, religion and mythology in the first English-language translation of Pratt's award-winning book.

Visiting the writer Hermann Hesse while researching alchemists with his old friend Professor Steiner, Corto drinks from the "source of the Alchemy Rose" and becomes immersed in a surreal and dreamlike adventure that involves Klingsor, the quest for the Holy Grail, Death, the Devil, and the Sandman, among others. This complexly plotted graphic novel was among Hugo Pratt's most philosophical ruminations on the imagination.