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Star of the unborn,
A fabulous journey through a world 100,000 years from our own, where mankind's deepest aspirations have been fuflfilled.
645 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1946
32 people are currently reading
2214 people want to read
About the author
Franz Werfel
274 books160 followersCzech-born poet, playwright, and novelist, whose central themes were religious faith, heroism, and human brotherhood. Franz Werfel's best-known works include The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a classic historical novel that portrays Armenian resistance to the Turks, and The Song of Bernadette (1941). The latter book had its start when Werfel, a Jew escaping the Nazis, found solace in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where St. Bernadette had had visions of the Virgin. Werfel made a promise to "sing the song" of the saint if he ever reached the United States. He died in California in 1945.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 25, 2020
I first read this novel when I was 16. Rereading it at a much later stage of life, I realize that not only did I never forget it, but it's been in the back of my mind for my whole life.
A utopian/dystopian story set 100,000 years in the future, Star of the Unborn tells the story of an "astro-mental" world that has overcome the physical plane. Communication and transportation are accomplished mainly in the mental sphere. All of our material needs and desires are produced by psycho manipulation of sunrays. All "work" is accomplished by a cheerful few and the goal of life is "idle play." The monks and nuns of the era reside in a vast palace where they learn not only to find the universe within themselves, but to put themselves into the universe. They have mastered the ability to manipulate their bodies to explore any corner of the universe, both on the grand and the atomic scale. Death too, has been largely "conquered" by a complex method of aging backwards.
Personally, I found this "perfect" world more dystopic than utopic. It's a world where the dogs have learned to talk but the cats make a united decision to depart for safer quarters when disaster threatens. Denial and naivete have created a pacifism that ultimately betrays mental society. Apparently, we can conquer our minds and the physical universe, but never the raging darkness in our souls.
Written by a European author in the early 20th Century, the novel betrays an anachronistic style and social assumptions. This didn't bother me in the least. If I had to choose only 1 book to read in my whole life, this would be it. It will be with me to the end. Star of the Unborn
A utopian/dystopian story set 100,000 years in the future, Star of the Unborn tells the story of an "astro-mental" world that has overcome the physical plane. Communication and transportation are accomplished mainly in the mental sphere. All of our material needs and desires are produced by psycho manipulation of sunrays. All "work" is accomplished by a cheerful few and the goal of life is "idle play." The monks and nuns of the era reside in a vast palace where they learn not only to find the universe within themselves, but to put themselves into the universe. They have mastered the ability to manipulate their bodies to explore any corner of the universe, both on the grand and the atomic scale. Death too, has been largely "conquered" by a complex method of aging backwards.
Personally, I found this "perfect" world more dystopic than utopic. It's a world where the dogs have learned to talk but the cats make a united decision to depart for safer quarters when disaster threatens. Denial and naivete have created a pacifism that ultimately betrays mental society. Apparently, we can conquer our minds and the physical universe, but never the raging darkness in our souls.
Written by a European author in the early 20th Century, the novel betrays an anachronistic style and social assumptions. This didn't bother me in the least. If I had to choose only 1 book to read in my whole life, this would be it. It will be with me to the end. Star of the Unborn
January 7, 2026
Georg starts out in the twentieth century minding his own existential misery when he suddenly gets catapulted a full thousand years into the future. One moment he is a writer with opinions. The next moment he is waking up in a world where humanity has apparently decided that technology, telepathy, and questionable fashion choices are the true path to glory. His grand arrival is even described as a return from death, since the locals find his whole twentieth century situation adorably antique.
The future folks look at him the way you might look at someone who still owns a rotary phone. They welcome him with the polite confusion reserved for lost tourists or resurrected authors. Georg tries to pretend he understands their gadgets, their habits, and their cheerful belief that history is more of a hobby than a trauma. They even inform him that his death happened long ago, and yet here he is, which really spices up breakfast conversations.
Djebel is the crown jewel of this Astromental civilization, a colossal artificial mountain made of crystal and light, built as the headquarters of the Chronosophers, the Marvelers, the Starrovers, and all the other cosmic brainiacs of Werfel's future world. A cathedral to knowledge, perception, and time-traveling mysticism, that glitters like a rainbow glacier and houses laboratories where people zip around the cosmos faster than light.
In Dr. Who fashion, from the inside, it's even bigger. An entire world with altered gravity, star-filtered chambers, and lamaseries devoted to every flavor of cosmic study, from practical space gymnastics to metaphysical stargazing. It stands as humanity's "transfiguration of nature," its highest symbolic structure.
He travels through this future world with a guide, a man named B.H., who behaves as if escorting a bewildered time refugee is just another item on his to do list.
B.H. is Georg's closest companion on this trip through the Astromental future. He steadies Georg, teases him, corrects him, and quietly carries more feeling than he lets on. He is refined, learned, and a little melancholy, the sort of friend who reads every stray scrap of lore and then offers it with a weary smile, and he repeatedly anchors Georg when the future threatens to wash him away.
B.H. also functions as Georg's moral and emotional counterweight. He is calmer, more sensitive, and often more perceptive about the strange customs they encounter. He interprets the oddities as if they were lines in an old book and gently corrects Georg's misreadings. When Georg panics or indulges in sarcasm, B.H. supplies steadiness and occasional foreknowledge, which gives him an aura of tragic prescience. B.H. repeatedly chooses to stay at Georgs side rather than vanish into the crowd of enlightened citizens.
B.H. is modest bravery in human form, a reader of the past who keeps Georg honest, and a quiet engine of feeling in a book that otherwise flirts with grand metaphysical machinery. He is the friend you would want at your elbow if you ever found yourself lectured by angels or shoved into a starry salon that believes history has been cancelled.
B.H. explains their brilliant new civilization with a confidence usually found in overcaffeinated professors. Georg listens, nods, and does his best to avoid looking like the prehistoric guest at a party meant for the sleek, polished children of tomorrow.
This new society runs on strange new powers. People slip into mystical trances, converse with celestial beings, and discuss cosmic forces with the same ease they discuss weather. They talk about being "second born" and "third born" and participating in vast spiritual cycles that convince Georg he forgot to read the syllabus.
Their world has no armies, no famines, no plagues, and most importantly, no twentieth century paperwork. To Georg, this smells suspiciously like wishful thinking in scientific disguise.
Everyone he meets treats him as a quaint relic of a more chaotic era. He becomes a living curiosity, an emotional museum exhibit. He tries to understand their customs. They try to understand why he is not glowing with enlightenment like everyone else. This mutual confusion becomes the book's favorite comedy routine.
As Georg travels across this society, he learns its cosmic purpose. Humans are apparently climbing spiritual ladders and preparing for a grand cosmic destiny involving stars that symbolize future souls not yet born. It is lofty. It is strange. It is exactly the sort of thing that would give a twentieth century novelist a headache before lunch.
Georg keeps meeting people who cheerfully declare that the world has outgrown violence, jealousy, greed, and other human specialties. Their optimism is so intense you start to suspect they are overcompensating for something. Still, Georg tries not to burst their bubble, mostly because he is not sure he would survive a century that uses telepathy for social etiquette.
And through it all he watches this future world with the baffled curiosity of a man who stepped out to buy bread and fell into a philosophical theme park. Everything is brighter. Everything is cleaner. Everything is also deeply strange. He receives visions, meets cosmic figures, and hears prophecies about destinies that make his old life feel like a warm up act.
The book builds toward something both personal and cosmic, with the future world revealing more of its true shape as Georg tries to figure out where he belongs in a timeline that treats him like an unplanned guest.
All of those sprawling cosmic visions feel like the author sat down, asked himself what would happen if a prophet, a novelist, and a mystic all shared one brain, and then decided to write the result before the feeling wore off. It is bold, overstuffed, sentimental, metaphysical, and occasionally so earnest that even I felt a flicker of sympathy for the twentieth century curmudgeon trapped inside it. The book reaches for transcendence with both hands and sometimes ends up clutching fog, but the ambition alone makes it fascinating.
The novel is, in essence, a guided tour of humanity seen through a cracked crystal lens. Werfel wanted to imagine a future where people have finally stopped setting themselves on fire for entertainment, and he wrapped that hope inside a wild sequence of visions, lectures, revelations, and interdimensional asides that could exhaust a saint.
At the same time, there is real tenderness in his portrait of Georg, the bewildered visitor from the past. Georg is the anchor. Without him, the whole thing would float away like a philosophical parade balloon.
Humanity can evolve spiritually. Suffering should not be our permanent habitat. History is a long classroom where the lessons are habitually tardy and never as expected. The future holds moral possibilities we keep refusing to imagine. And, tucked under all that cosmic architecture, a quieter idea appears: people desperately want to believe there is a pattern to their pain.
Franz Werfel was a Czech born Jewish writer who drifted ever closer to Catholicism as his life advanced. He lurched through war, exile, dislocation, and all the charming catastrophes the twentieth century specialized in. He wrote poetry, plays, novels, and pleas for a kinder world. His compassion was genuine, almost stubborn. He carried an intense spiritual streak that kept trying to reconcile humanity's brilliance with humanity's appetite for disaster. The man lived through enough turmoil to earn a few cosmic fantasies, and you can feel that longing for a healed future seep through every chapter.
I think he wrote the book this way because he wanted to escape the brutal logic of his century without ignoring the wounds it left on him. The future he imagines is not just a setting. It is an argument. He is insisting that human beings can become better, wiser, gentler, and that this evolution might require both suffering and grace. The novel is his way of saying that the soul deserves a horizon much larger than the one history allowed him.
My favorite parts are the moments when Georg, hilariously lost in this enlightened future, reacts with confusion, irritation, or stubborn humanity. Those scenes are the oxygen of the book. They let the cosmic machinery breathe by giving us a character who behaves like a person instead of a floating sermon.
As for the length, did it need to be that long? Probably not, unless the goal was to make sure readers experienced a small simulation of spiritual eternity. But shortening it would have taken away some of its charm. Excess is part of its personality.
And did it need to be so strange? Absolutely!! A book about transcendence written in a straightforward tone would not work. The strangeness is the point. The novel may wander, ramble, glow, and occasionally lose itself, as well as many potential readers, but it does so with an earnest heart that makes the whole strange journey feel worth taking.
The future folks look at him the way you might look at someone who still owns a rotary phone. They welcome him with the polite confusion reserved for lost tourists or resurrected authors. Georg tries to pretend he understands their gadgets, their habits, and their cheerful belief that history is more of a hobby than a trauma. They even inform him that his death happened long ago, and yet here he is, which really spices up breakfast conversations.
Djebel is the crown jewel of this Astromental civilization, a colossal artificial mountain made of crystal and light, built as the headquarters of the Chronosophers, the Marvelers, the Starrovers, and all the other cosmic brainiacs of Werfel's future world. A cathedral to knowledge, perception, and time-traveling mysticism, that glitters like a rainbow glacier and houses laboratories where people zip around the cosmos faster than light.
In Dr. Who fashion, from the inside, it's even bigger. An entire world with altered gravity, star-filtered chambers, and lamaseries devoted to every flavor of cosmic study, from practical space gymnastics to metaphysical stargazing. It stands as humanity's "transfiguration of nature," its highest symbolic structure.
He travels through this future world with a guide, a man named B.H., who behaves as if escorting a bewildered time refugee is just another item on his to do list.
B.H. is Georg's closest companion on this trip through the Astromental future. He steadies Georg, teases him, corrects him, and quietly carries more feeling than he lets on. He is refined, learned, and a little melancholy, the sort of friend who reads every stray scrap of lore and then offers it with a weary smile, and he repeatedly anchors Georg when the future threatens to wash him away.
B.H. also functions as Georg's moral and emotional counterweight. He is calmer, more sensitive, and often more perceptive about the strange customs they encounter. He interprets the oddities as if they were lines in an old book and gently corrects Georg's misreadings. When Georg panics or indulges in sarcasm, B.H. supplies steadiness and occasional foreknowledge, which gives him an aura of tragic prescience. B.H. repeatedly chooses to stay at Georgs side rather than vanish into the crowd of enlightened citizens.
B.H. is modest bravery in human form, a reader of the past who keeps Georg honest, and a quiet engine of feeling in a book that otherwise flirts with grand metaphysical machinery. He is the friend you would want at your elbow if you ever found yourself lectured by angels or shoved into a starry salon that believes history has been cancelled.
B.H. explains their brilliant new civilization with a confidence usually found in overcaffeinated professors. Georg listens, nods, and does his best to avoid looking like the prehistoric guest at a party meant for the sleek, polished children of tomorrow.
This new society runs on strange new powers. People slip into mystical trances, converse with celestial beings, and discuss cosmic forces with the same ease they discuss weather. They talk about being "second born" and "third born" and participating in vast spiritual cycles that convince Georg he forgot to read the syllabus.
Their world has no armies, no famines, no plagues, and most importantly, no twentieth century paperwork. To Georg, this smells suspiciously like wishful thinking in scientific disguise.
Everyone he meets treats him as a quaint relic of a more chaotic era. He becomes a living curiosity, an emotional museum exhibit. He tries to understand their customs. They try to understand why he is not glowing with enlightenment like everyone else. This mutual confusion becomes the book's favorite comedy routine.
As Georg travels across this society, he learns its cosmic purpose. Humans are apparently climbing spiritual ladders and preparing for a grand cosmic destiny involving stars that symbolize future souls not yet born. It is lofty. It is strange. It is exactly the sort of thing that would give a twentieth century novelist a headache before lunch.
Georg keeps meeting people who cheerfully declare that the world has outgrown violence, jealousy, greed, and other human specialties. Their optimism is so intense you start to suspect they are overcompensating for something. Still, Georg tries not to burst their bubble, mostly because he is not sure he would survive a century that uses telepathy for social etiquette.
And through it all he watches this future world with the baffled curiosity of a man who stepped out to buy bread and fell into a philosophical theme park. Everything is brighter. Everything is cleaner. Everything is also deeply strange. He receives visions, meets cosmic figures, and hears prophecies about destinies that make his old life feel like a warm up act.
The book builds toward something both personal and cosmic, with the future world revealing more of its true shape as Georg tries to figure out where he belongs in a timeline that treats him like an unplanned guest.
All of those sprawling cosmic visions feel like the author sat down, asked himself what would happen if a prophet, a novelist, and a mystic all shared one brain, and then decided to write the result before the feeling wore off. It is bold, overstuffed, sentimental, metaphysical, and occasionally so earnest that even I felt a flicker of sympathy for the twentieth century curmudgeon trapped inside it. The book reaches for transcendence with both hands and sometimes ends up clutching fog, but the ambition alone makes it fascinating.
The novel is, in essence, a guided tour of humanity seen through a cracked crystal lens. Werfel wanted to imagine a future where people have finally stopped setting themselves on fire for entertainment, and he wrapped that hope inside a wild sequence of visions, lectures, revelations, and interdimensional asides that could exhaust a saint.
At the same time, there is real tenderness in his portrait of Georg, the bewildered visitor from the past. Georg is the anchor. Without him, the whole thing would float away like a philosophical parade balloon.
Humanity can evolve spiritually. Suffering should not be our permanent habitat. History is a long classroom where the lessons are habitually tardy and never as expected. The future holds moral possibilities we keep refusing to imagine. And, tucked under all that cosmic architecture, a quieter idea appears: people desperately want to believe there is a pattern to their pain.
Franz Werfel was a Czech born Jewish writer who drifted ever closer to Catholicism as his life advanced. He lurched through war, exile, dislocation, and all the charming catastrophes the twentieth century specialized in. He wrote poetry, plays, novels, and pleas for a kinder world. His compassion was genuine, almost stubborn. He carried an intense spiritual streak that kept trying to reconcile humanity's brilliance with humanity's appetite for disaster. The man lived through enough turmoil to earn a few cosmic fantasies, and you can feel that longing for a healed future seep through every chapter.
I think he wrote the book this way because he wanted to escape the brutal logic of his century without ignoring the wounds it left on him. The future he imagines is not just a setting. It is an argument. He is insisting that human beings can become better, wiser, gentler, and that this evolution might require both suffering and grace. The novel is his way of saying that the soul deserves a horizon much larger than the one history allowed him.
My favorite parts are the moments when Georg, hilariously lost in this enlightened future, reacts with confusion, irritation, or stubborn humanity. Those scenes are the oxygen of the book. They let the cosmic machinery breathe by giving us a character who behaves like a person instead of a floating sermon.
As for the length, did it need to be that long? Probably not, unless the goal was to make sure readers experienced a small simulation of spiritual eternity. But shortening it would have taken away some of its charm. Excess is part of its personality.
And did it need to be so strange? Absolutely!! A book about transcendence written in a straightforward tone would not work. The strangeness is the point. The novel may wander, ramble, glow, and occasionally lose itself, as well as many potential readers, but it does so with an earnest heart that makes the whole strange journey feel worth taking.
August 11, 2023
A glorious quasi new wave fever dream of unexpected depth.
July 20, 2021
Dieser Schmöker hat über 600 Seiten und war damit wohl der längste Klassiker, den ich in meinem bisherigen Leben gelesen habe. Ja, "Portrait of a Lady" war auch lange, aber es hat sich nicht so lang angefühlt. Allein schon optisch und auf taktiler Ebene: Das Buch hatte aufgeschlagen nicht auf meinen Oberschenkeln Platz. Ich musste im Schneidersitz lesen, damit ich die ganze Seite sehen konnte. Und der Schmöker ist schwer! So schwer, dass ich den Schneidersitz nie wirklich lange aushielt.
Ich hab mich mehrfach dafür verflucht, dieses Buch meiner Leseliste für die Bachelorarbeit hinzugefügt zu haben. Der Hauptgrund dafür waren die Länge und die Ausführlichkeit der Beschreibungen. Der Erzähler F.W. kann nicht einfach sagen, dass er jemanden schön findet. Nein: Zuerst muss er die Figur bis ins kleinste Detail beschreiben, dann einen spöttischen Kommentar über den Jugendkult und den Schönheitswahn Hollywoods fallen lassen und sich anschließend in Erinnerungen verlieren. Und das alles in langen und verschachtelten Sätzen, die sich über die ganze Seite erstreckten. Das machte es für mich schwierig, dabei zu bleiben. Hier fünfzig Seiten zu lesen, konnte locker einen ganzen Nachmittag füllen.
Das ganze Setting der Geschichte ist schräg. F.W. ersteht in der fernen Zukunft von den Toten auf, um an einer Hochzeit teilzunehmen. Die Menschen haben sich weiterentwickelt, leben endlich in Frieden, bereisen das Weltall, können Hunderte Kilometer in wenigen Sekunden zurücklegen... Hört sich perfekt an? Ist es nicht. Von der ersten Seite weg bescherte mir der Text ein beklemmendes Gefühl, das sich bis zum Ende steigerte. Einige Dinge passten einfach nicht! Die unglaublich konservative Kirche, die weiter großen Einfluss hat, die Waffensammlungen, der geheimnisvolle Wintergarten, der immer wieder aufgegriffen wird... Vieles war einfach gruselig. Zwar versucht der Erzähler immer einen lockeren und spöttischen Ton beizubehalten, aber naja. Trotzdem gruselig und abschnittsweise richtig unangenehm. Ich sag nur: Wintergarten.
F.W. verteilt viele Seitenhiebe in diesem Text. Er macht sich über die Weltkriege lustig, über Politiker, die sich zu sehr an ihre Macht klammern, über Journalismus, Kunstkritik, die Jugend, die Wissenschaft. Eigentlich gibt es fast keine Themen, die hier nicht kritisiert werden. Das war über weite Teile interessant, manchmal meiner Meinung nach aber zu viel des Guten.
Mein Fazit? Ein unglaublich dicker Wälzer, der sehr ins Detail geht. Trotzdem eine interessante Lektüre.
Ich hab mich mehrfach dafür verflucht, dieses Buch meiner Leseliste für die Bachelorarbeit hinzugefügt zu haben. Der Hauptgrund dafür waren die Länge und die Ausführlichkeit der Beschreibungen. Der Erzähler F.W. kann nicht einfach sagen, dass er jemanden schön findet. Nein: Zuerst muss er die Figur bis ins kleinste Detail beschreiben, dann einen spöttischen Kommentar über den Jugendkult und den Schönheitswahn Hollywoods fallen lassen und sich anschließend in Erinnerungen verlieren. Und das alles in langen und verschachtelten Sätzen, die sich über die ganze Seite erstreckten. Das machte es für mich schwierig, dabei zu bleiben. Hier fünfzig Seiten zu lesen, konnte locker einen ganzen Nachmittag füllen.
Das ganze Setting der Geschichte ist schräg. F.W. ersteht in der fernen Zukunft von den Toten auf, um an einer Hochzeit teilzunehmen. Die Menschen haben sich weiterentwickelt, leben endlich in Frieden, bereisen das Weltall, können Hunderte Kilometer in wenigen Sekunden zurücklegen... Hört sich perfekt an? Ist es nicht. Von der ersten Seite weg bescherte mir der Text ein beklemmendes Gefühl, das sich bis zum Ende steigerte. Einige Dinge passten einfach nicht! Die unglaublich konservative Kirche, die weiter großen Einfluss hat, die Waffensammlungen, der geheimnisvolle Wintergarten, der immer wieder aufgegriffen wird... Vieles war einfach gruselig. Zwar versucht der Erzähler immer einen lockeren und spöttischen Ton beizubehalten, aber naja. Trotzdem gruselig und abschnittsweise richtig unangenehm. Ich sag nur: Wintergarten.
F.W. verteilt viele Seitenhiebe in diesem Text. Er macht sich über die Weltkriege lustig, über Politiker, die sich zu sehr an ihre Macht klammern, über Journalismus, Kunstkritik, die Jugend, die Wissenschaft. Eigentlich gibt es fast keine Themen, die hier nicht kritisiert werden. Das war über weite Teile interessant, manchmal meiner Meinung nach aber zu viel des Guten.
Mein Fazit? Ein unglaublich dicker Wälzer, der sehr ins Detail geht. Trotzdem eine interessante Lektüre.
August 26, 2022
Incredible. Profound. Beyond profound IMHO. Werfel finished this in 1945, on August 24th. My birthday in 1970. He died two days later. I finished it today and now I am reflecting on this amazing artist. Read it, folks. Get a used copy for 10 $. It will change you.
April 6, 2018
This is a difficult book to review, mostly because Werfel has tried to make it so many things at once and just missed the mark on nearly all of them. Werfel began writing the novel in 1943 when he knew he was dying of a heart condition. By this time, Werfel, who had been born to an Orthodox Jewish family, had converted to Catholicism at least in belief if not going through the rituals (and there is some question about that). Therefore, his final work is suffused with conservative Catholic doctrine and theology and works in part as a kind of confession. The novel is also something of a utopian science-fiction story, but with significant philosophical differences from science fiction. Additionally, this is a dream narrative and no matter how often the narrator insists that the events he describes were not a dream, the story runs along the logic of dream narrative. For instance, the narrator has no clear recollection of how he arrived in the distant future of 100,000 years hence; he just appeared. There are curious narrative breaks. Every event seems to be some kind of distortion or symbolic representation of the narrator's life. So, the novel definitely has all the characteristics of a dream narrative.
The story as such is peculiar. The narrator F.W. has been summoned from death (which he cannot remember) by an incarnation of his friend B.H. in the distant future as a wedding present for the people B.H. now lives with. F.W. spends three days in the Astromental Age of the far future, in which humanity has moved forward in spirituality so that spiritual-mental abilities have replaced science and technology, making life in general more convenient and languid. During this time, F.W. meets many of the important people of this distant age, in which people are assigned specific social functions. He also witnesses the rapid breakdown of this society, which erupts into a war that lasts 45 minutes between the disgruntled, bored youth of the age, and people who live atavistically in "jungles" that mysteriously emerge from the landscape, these jungles being mostly 19th-century European villages. Throughout his time in the future, F.W. remarks on the similarities between his adventure and Dante's "Divine Comedy," with B.H. as F.W.'s "Vergil."
"Star of the Unborn" appears to be a science-fiction novel, but with a significant difference. Based upon his experiences as a soldier in World War I and refugee who barely escaped being sent to a concentration camp in World War II, Werfel distrusts modernity, as that term was understood in the 1940s. He believes that fascism and authoritarianism are direct results of increased reliance upon technology and science-based rejection of religion. He repeatedly makes statements to the effect that new scientific discoveries in atomic theory and relativity are as faith-based as religious beliefs and 20th-century scientists are only discovering what the two great religions (in his view - Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism) already knew. He longs for a pre-technological, religiously oriented world, and thus projects a post-technological, religiously oriented world of the future. So, he writes a science-fiction novel in which a kind of Jesuitical Catholicism is the "science," and science becomes the religious other of the story. Thus, "Star of the Unborn" is very similar in philosophical perspective to another quasi-science-fiction story by a religious writer who does not normally write science fiction - "That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis. However, Werfel's novel is far more readable than Lewis's because Werfel never presumes to lecture the reader through his characters and Werfel interjects much mildly satirical humor. Also, Werfel creates a mostly utopian rather than dystopian setting. His Catholic perspective does not allow him, though, to imagine the perfect utopia. The state is a creation of humanity, imperfect because of original sin, and thus still distant from god even if temporally much closer to the end of days. The fallen state of humanity inevitably leads to a fallen State politically. However, this fallen State is the means by which F.W. can experience death (through a trip through the underworld), make his confession, and experience a symbolic rebirth. The extent to which one accepts the various philosophical claims made throughout the book, I suspect, rest largely upon the degree to which one accepts Catholic theology. Otherwise, a skeptical reader is likely to be thinking of all the ways Werfel mischaracterizes science, history, technology, and atheism as his means to bolster the supposed "truth" of his Catholic perspective.
Still, the novel has many amusing moments. The existing translation into English is eminently readable and highly consistent. Credit goes to Werfel for ambition and for not making a religio-philosophical novel that is overly preachy.
The story as such is peculiar. The narrator F.W. has been summoned from death (which he cannot remember) by an incarnation of his friend B.H. in the distant future as a wedding present for the people B.H. now lives with. F.W. spends three days in the Astromental Age of the far future, in which humanity has moved forward in spirituality so that spiritual-mental abilities have replaced science and technology, making life in general more convenient and languid. During this time, F.W. meets many of the important people of this distant age, in which people are assigned specific social functions. He also witnesses the rapid breakdown of this society, which erupts into a war that lasts 45 minutes between the disgruntled, bored youth of the age, and people who live atavistically in "jungles" that mysteriously emerge from the landscape, these jungles being mostly 19th-century European villages. Throughout his time in the future, F.W. remarks on the similarities between his adventure and Dante's "Divine Comedy," with B.H. as F.W.'s "Vergil."
"Star of the Unborn" appears to be a science-fiction novel, but with a significant difference. Based upon his experiences as a soldier in World War I and refugee who barely escaped being sent to a concentration camp in World War II, Werfel distrusts modernity, as that term was understood in the 1940s. He believes that fascism and authoritarianism are direct results of increased reliance upon technology and science-based rejection of religion. He repeatedly makes statements to the effect that new scientific discoveries in atomic theory and relativity are as faith-based as religious beliefs and 20th-century scientists are only discovering what the two great religions (in his view - Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism) already knew. He longs for a pre-technological, religiously oriented world, and thus projects a post-technological, religiously oriented world of the future. So, he writes a science-fiction novel in which a kind of Jesuitical Catholicism is the "science," and science becomes the religious other of the story. Thus, "Star of the Unborn" is very similar in philosophical perspective to another quasi-science-fiction story by a religious writer who does not normally write science fiction - "That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis. However, Werfel's novel is far more readable than Lewis's because Werfel never presumes to lecture the reader through his characters and Werfel interjects much mildly satirical humor. Also, Werfel creates a mostly utopian rather than dystopian setting. His Catholic perspective does not allow him, though, to imagine the perfect utopia. The state is a creation of humanity, imperfect because of original sin, and thus still distant from god even if temporally much closer to the end of days. The fallen state of humanity inevitably leads to a fallen State politically. However, this fallen State is the means by which F.W. can experience death (through a trip through the underworld), make his confession, and experience a symbolic rebirth. The extent to which one accepts the various philosophical claims made throughout the book, I suspect, rest largely upon the degree to which one accepts Catholic theology. Otherwise, a skeptical reader is likely to be thinking of all the ways Werfel mischaracterizes science, history, technology, and atheism as his means to bolster the supposed "truth" of his Catholic perspective.
Still, the novel has many amusing moments. The existing translation into English is eminently readable and highly consistent. Credit goes to Werfel for ambition and for not making a religio-philosophical novel that is overly preachy.
December 8, 2012
An arduous but stunning piece of literature.
September 17, 2023
I was recommended this novel by Matt from BookPilled.
David Leyton's review sums this story up far better than I can here, and I agree this book cannot be easily rated. For the reader, it's almost more of a project than a novel. This took discipline to finish, and I'm a bit relieved but I *can* say it was worth it. I went through just about every emotion reading this; joy, grief, anger, wonder, annoyance, boredom... okay, lots of boredom, over many pages even. But that's fine. I did greatly enjoy my time with FW, by the end I was very sad to turn the last page and say goodbye. This is one of the very few author self-inserts I've read that is done well, and in one particular passage, is extremely heartbreaking. The way that the author shares his past and his humorous attempts to implore the reader, early on you really do get the impression that you have a friend in FW.
Throughout the entirety of this novel I was uncertain how this could possibly be rated but even considering the number of run-on paragraphs giving me endless grief, I knew I would never read another novel like this again in my life. In this century or in 100,000 years. And that alone deserves the five.
David Leyton's review sums this story up far better than I can here, and I agree this book cannot be easily rated. For the reader, it's almost more of a project than a novel. This took discipline to finish, and I'm a bit relieved but I *can* say it was worth it. I went through just about every emotion reading this; joy, grief, anger, wonder, annoyance, boredom... okay, lots of boredom, over many pages even. But that's fine. I did greatly enjoy my time with FW, by the end I was very sad to turn the last page and say goodbye. This is one of the very few author self-inserts I've read that is done well, and in one particular passage, is extremely heartbreaking. The way that the author shares his past and his humorous attempts to implore the reader, early on you really do get the impression that you have a friend in FW.
Throughout the entirety of this novel I was uncertain how this could possibly be rated but even considering the number of run-on paragraphs giving me endless grief, I knew I would never read another novel like this again in my life. In this century or in 100,000 years. And that alone deserves the five.
December 25, 2024
Psychedelisch-katholischer Trip im Angesicht von Werfels Tod, der noch heute so innovativ und fern aller Sci-Fi Klischees daherkommt, dass man dem Autor auch manche Länge verzeiht (und ein Frauenbild, bei dem ich oft an Theweleit denken musste). Nicht einfach aber lohnenswert.
April 10, 2009
When the kidlet's teacher discovered I read science fiction, she gleefully pressed a much-read paperback copy of this into my hands and told me it was her favorite book ever in the entire world. Feeling a little pressure, here.
I made it 458 pages -- about halfway -- and then just could not bear another moment.
This isn't exactly science fiction as we know it, Jim; it's more of an allegory or satire like Gulliver's Travels. Unfortunately, unlike Gulliver's Travels, this book is bo-ring.
I made it 458 pages -- about halfway -- and then just could not bear another moment.
This isn't exactly science fiction as we know it, Jim; it's more of an allegory or satire like Gulliver's Travels. Unfortunately, unlike Gulliver's Travels, this book is bo-ring.
July 15, 2020
I found out about this book from the New Yorker article about the German literary scene's WWII exile in Los Angeles ("Exodus", Mar. 9 2020):
Werfel, having prophesied Nazi terror in “Musa Dagh,” shied away from a head-on confrontation with it. At the start of his final novel, a bizarre and fascinating experiment called “Star of the Unborn” (1946), Werfel confesses his inability to address the “monstrous reality” of the day. In a sly way, the novel speaks to that reality all the same. The narrator, F.W., is transported to a peaceful utopia in the distant future, which collapses into chaos. The tone is mainly playful, even zany, but a chill descends when F.W. visits a facility known as Wintergarden, in which those who have tired of life undergo a “retrovolution” into infancy and then death. The process sometimes goes awry, producing ghastly mutations. It is a conjuring of the Holocaust written just as reports of the German death camps were appearing.
This book has almost nothing in common with the sort of daydreams and brainstorms that spawn most works in the fantasy genre. Each of the peculiarities described by Werfel defies fictional tradition. Normally, world-building relies heavily on lateral thinking, but Werfel seemed to be laterally not-thinking, laterally existing, weaving impossibilities seamlessly together. The first chapter assures us this is a sort of dream journal, and the next few chapters establish a surreal feeling that makes that proclamation seem believable. Werfel doesn't seem to be influenced by any previous writers, thinkers, or religious figures.
One highlight so far is the "Transparency", a solar event that gives all life on Earth a suffusion of oxygen. Before the event, vast flocks of birds congregate in a metropolis. The solar event kills every bird on the planet, but only causes a sort of religious ecstasy for humanity; as if the radiation obliterates some unneeded part of the psyche.
The Transparency takes place on Friday, November 13th, in an unspecified year. Unfortunately, we of the 21st century most likely won't be alive when it happens, since all fire (including volcanoes!) will be gone by then, according to Werfel.
David Lynch almost has it.
Werfel, having prophesied Nazi terror in “Musa Dagh,” shied away from a head-on confrontation with it. At the start of his final novel, a bizarre and fascinating experiment called “Star of the Unborn” (1946), Werfel confesses his inability to address the “monstrous reality” of the day. In a sly way, the novel speaks to that reality all the same. The narrator, F.W., is transported to a peaceful utopia in the distant future, which collapses into chaos. The tone is mainly playful, even zany, but a chill descends when F.W. visits a facility known as Wintergarden, in which those who have tired of life undergo a “retrovolution” into infancy and then death. The process sometimes goes awry, producing ghastly mutations. It is a conjuring of the Holocaust written just as reports of the German death camps were appearing.
This book has almost nothing in common with the sort of daydreams and brainstorms that spawn most works in the fantasy genre. Each of the peculiarities described by Werfel defies fictional tradition. Normally, world-building relies heavily on lateral thinking, but Werfel seemed to be laterally not-thinking, laterally existing, weaving impossibilities seamlessly together. The first chapter assures us this is a sort of dream journal, and the next few chapters establish a surreal feeling that makes that proclamation seem believable. Werfel doesn't seem to be influenced by any previous writers, thinkers, or religious figures.
One highlight so far is the "Transparency", a solar event that gives all life on Earth a suffusion of oxygen. Before the event, vast flocks of birds congregate in a metropolis. The solar event kills every bird on the planet, but only causes a sort of religious ecstasy for humanity; as if the radiation obliterates some unneeded part of the psyche.
The Transparency takes place on Friday, November 13th, in an unspecified year. Unfortunately, we of the 21st century most likely won't be alive when it happens, since all fire (including volcanoes!) will be gone by then, according to Werfel.
David Lynch almost has it.
August 5, 2025
Franz Werfel’s Star of the Unborn isn’t the kind of book you pick up lightly. It doesn’t entertain so much as it interrogates, enlightens, and envelops you in a dizzying metaphysical fever dream. Completed in exile shortly before Werfel’s death in 1945 and published posthumously, this novel is both a eulogy for a shattered world and a final, hopeful gesture toward the unmanifest future.
At once a metaphysical epic and a speculative, spiritual thought experiment, it belongs less to the genre of sci-fi as we commonly understand it and more to a spiritual pilgrimage dressed in futuristic garb. You don’t read this book—you undergo it.
Let’s start with the premise: Werfel, as a fictionalised version of himself (yes, you heard that right—this book goes full meta), is resurrected tens of thousands of years into the future. Earth has changed dramatically. Gone are the trappings of modern civilisation—its wars, its nation-states, its capitalism. In their place is a kind of spiritual utopia, where telepathy has replaced speech, interstellar travel is a Tuesday afternoon hobby, and humanity has evolved beyond materialism into something like a cosmic consciousness club. Sounds great, right? Well, not quite.
Guided by a radiant being named Ormus (equal parts spiritual guide and cosmic Uber driver), Werfel is shown a world that, despite all its dazzling progress, hasn’t escaped the age-old dilemmas of meaning, evil, and suffering. The Holocaust may be in the distant past, but its echo lingers in the soul of the universe, unresolved, unredeemed. Therein lies the novel’s emotional and philosophical core: technology evolves, but the soul remains troubled.
Werfel’s journey isn’t just about sightseeing through a post-historical Eden. He has a mission: to influence the soul of an unborn being—potentially a messianic figure—who may carry forward the moral and spiritual revolution needed to complete the transformation of humanity. This “Star of the Unborn” is not simply a person, but a concept: the infinite, latent potential within every human, every society, and every age. That Werfel is the one given this task—after everything he has seen, lost, and endured—is both tragic and redemptive.
In terms of style, Star of the Unborn is... intense. There are no short-cuts, no minimalist prose, no sleek action scenes. Instead, there are dense, baroque meditations, abstract conversations that float somewhere between Platonic dialogue and mystical TED Talk, and page-long philosophical digressions on art, time, the soul, and suffering. Imagine The Magic Mountain if Thomas Mann had gone full theosophical and then launched Hans Castorp into a telepathic, interplanetary commune. Or take C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, but cross it with Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, and you might start to get a feel for Werfel’s ambition.
This is not to say the novel lacks emotional impact. On the contrary, what makes Star of the Unborn so remarkable is its aching vulnerability. Werfel, a Jewish exile whose literary and spiritual roots spanned Judaism, Christianity, mysticism, and modernist existentialism, pours his entire philosophical inheritance into this final work. You can feel the weight of the 20th century pressing through the pages—the Holocaust, the disillusionment with modernity, the failure of the Enlightenment dream, the crisis of faith. And yet, against all odds, he dares to hope.
Consider this quote:
“The unborn are not only those yet to come, but also those who dwell in the still unrealized potential of every moment.”
Here, Werfel isn’t just talking about children, or the future. He’s talking about us, now. The parts of ourselves we haven’t accessed. The compassion we haven’t acted on. The beauty we haven’t created. The forgiveness we haven’t granted. It’s a radical redefinition of time—not as a linear progression from past to future, but as a layered, spiritual field where all moments are alive with moral possibility.
The novel is also a kind of spiritual reckoning. Werfel was a deeply religious man—not in the dogmatic sense, but in the mystical, aching, searching sense. He believed in the soul’s journey, in divine purpose, and in the sacredness of art. His writing here feels like a prayer wrapped in speculative fiction. And it’s not a convenient, sanitised spirituality either. Even in the far-future utopia, pain and evil remain. Werfel refuses to give us the easy answers. Instead, he offers spiritual responsibility. The “Star of the Unborn” isn’t going to save us. We are its midwives.
So—why is this novel not more widely known? Probably because it’s dense. Philosophical sci-fi was always a niche, and Werfel didn’t make things easy. The structure is non-linear, the language often abstract, and the narrative voice deliberately blurs the boundary between reality, dream, and symbol. But therein lies the power. This isn’t a beach read. It’s a cosmological excavation.
For readers of more conventional sci-fi—say, Asimov’s Foundation or Clarke’s Childhood’s End—Werfel’s novel might feel like a detour into a surrealist chapel. There are no robots, no space battles, no tech-splaining. Instead, we get spiritual telepathy, existential reckonings, and metaphysical rebirth. And yet, if you’re someone who reads sci-fi not just for the gadgets but for the big questions—Who are we? Why do we suffer? What does it mean to be human in the cosmos?—then Star of the Unborn is a hidden galaxy worth charting.
It’s also a profoundly post-WWII book, in every sense of that word. Werfel had witnessed the collapse of European civilisation. He’d seen the machinery of modernity used to orchestrate genocide. He’d lost his homeland. And in this novel, he responds not with nihilism, but with radical, stubborn faith. Not in institutions or ideologies, but in the soul. The novel becomes a literary ark, carrying Werfel’s deepest hopes into a future he would never see.
The irony is rich: a man dying in exile, writing to the unborn, about a world so spiritually evolved it no longer needs to remember what he lived through.
And yet, even in this future, there is something missing—a you, a me, a soul that still must choose compassion over apathy, love over despair, understanding over dominance.
That’s the message of Star of the Unborn. It’s not about a messiah coming to save us. It’s about becoming messianic ourselves, not in grand gestures, but in the slow, often invisible work of moral awakening.
In a time when our own world is once again grappling with technological acceleration, spiritual confusion, and rising tides of division, Werfel’s novel feels eerily relevant. It’s like a cosmic post-it note from the past, reminding us that progress without wisdom is a hollow triumph. That humanity without humility becomes machinery. That even in utopia, the soul remains the final frontier.
In the end, Star of the Unborn isn’t for everyone. But for the seekers, the wanderers, the sci-fi philosophers, and the postmodern mystics—it’s a rare and radiant star in the literary cosmos. A long, strange, luminous trip. Worth every metaphysical mile.
At once a metaphysical epic and a speculative, spiritual thought experiment, it belongs less to the genre of sci-fi as we commonly understand it and more to a spiritual pilgrimage dressed in futuristic garb. You don’t read this book—you undergo it.
Let’s start with the premise: Werfel, as a fictionalised version of himself (yes, you heard that right—this book goes full meta), is resurrected tens of thousands of years into the future. Earth has changed dramatically. Gone are the trappings of modern civilisation—its wars, its nation-states, its capitalism. In their place is a kind of spiritual utopia, where telepathy has replaced speech, interstellar travel is a Tuesday afternoon hobby, and humanity has evolved beyond materialism into something like a cosmic consciousness club. Sounds great, right? Well, not quite.
Guided by a radiant being named Ormus (equal parts spiritual guide and cosmic Uber driver), Werfel is shown a world that, despite all its dazzling progress, hasn’t escaped the age-old dilemmas of meaning, evil, and suffering. The Holocaust may be in the distant past, but its echo lingers in the soul of the universe, unresolved, unredeemed. Therein lies the novel’s emotional and philosophical core: technology evolves, but the soul remains troubled.
Werfel’s journey isn’t just about sightseeing through a post-historical Eden. He has a mission: to influence the soul of an unborn being—potentially a messianic figure—who may carry forward the moral and spiritual revolution needed to complete the transformation of humanity. This “Star of the Unborn” is not simply a person, but a concept: the infinite, latent potential within every human, every society, and every age. That Werfel is the one given this task—after everything he has seen, lost, and endured—is both tragic and redemptive.
In terms of style, Star of the Unborn is... intense. There are no short-cuts, no minimalist prose, no sleek action scenes. Instead, there are dense, baroque meditations, abstract conversations that float somewhere between Platonic dialogue and mystical TED Talk, and page-long philosophical digressions on art, time, the soul, and suffering. Imagine The Magic Mountain if Thomas Mann had gone full theosophical and then launched Hans Castorp into a telepathic, interplanetary commune. Or take C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, but cross it with Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, and you might start to get a feel for Werfel’s ambition.
This is not to say the novel lacks emotional impact. On the contrary, what makes Star of the Unborn so remarkable is its aching vulnerability. Werfel, a Jewish exile whose literary and spiritual roots spanned Judaism, Christianity, mysticism, and modernist existentialism, pours his entire philosophical inheritance into this final work. You can feel the weight of the 20th century pressing through the pages—the Holocaust, the disillusionment with modernity, the failure of the Enlightenment dream, the crisis of faith. And yet, against all odds, he dares to hope.
Consider this quote:
“The unborn are not only those yet to come, but also those who dwell in the still unrealized potential of every moment.”
Here, Werfel isn’t just talking about children, or the future. He’s talking about us, now. The parts of ourselves we haven’t accessed. The compassion we haven’t acted on. The beauty we haven’t created. The forgiveness we haven’t granted. It’s a radical redefinition of time—not as a linear progression from past to future, but as a layered, spiritual field where all moments are alive with moral possibility.
The novel is also a kind of spiritual reckoning. Werfel was a deeply religious man—not in the dogmatic sense, but in the mystical, aching, searching sense. He believed in the soul’s journey, in divine purpose, and in the sacredness of art. His writing here feels like a prayer wrapped in speculative fiction. And it’s not a convenient, sanitised spirituality either. Even in the far-future utopia, pain and evil remain. Werfel refuses to give us the easy answers. Instead, he offers spiritual responsibility. The “Star of the Unborn” isn’t going to save us. We are its midwives.
So—why is this novel not more widely known? Probably because it’s dense. Philosophical sci-fi was always a niche, and Werfel didn’t make things easy. The structure is non-linear, the language often abstract, and the narrative voice deliberately blurs the boundary between reality, dream, and symbol. But therein lies the power. This isn’t a beach read. It’s a cosmological excavation.
For readers of more conventional sci-fi—say, Asimov’s Foundation or Clarke’s Childhood’s End—Werfel’s novel might feel like a detour into a surrealist chapel. There are no robots, no space battles, no tech-splaining. Instead, we get spiritual telepathy, existential reckonings, and metaphysical rebirth. And yet, if you’re someone who reads sci-fi not just for the gadgets but for the big questions—Who are we? Why do we suffer? What does it mean to be human in the cosmos?—then Star of the Unborn is a hidden galaxy worth charting.
It’s also a profoundly post-WWII book, in every sense of that word. Werfel had witnessed the collapse of European civilisation. He’d seen the machinery of modernity used to orchestrate genocide. He’d lost his homeland. And in this novel, he responds not with nihilism, but with radical, stubborn faith. Not in institutions or ideologies, but in the soul. The novel becomes a literary ark, carrying Werfel’s deepest hopes into a future he would never see.
The irony is rich: a man dying in exile, writing to the unborn, about a world so spiritually evolved it no longer needs to remember what he lived through.
And yet, even in this future, there is something missing—a you, a me, a soul that still must choose compassion over apathy, love over despair, understanding over dominance.
That’s the message of Star of the Unborn. It’s not about a messiah coming to save us. It’s about becoming messianic ourselves, not in grand gestures, but in the slow, often invisible work of moral awakening.
In a time when our own world is once again grappling with technological acceleration, spiritual confusion, and rising tides of division, Werfel’s novel feels eerily relevant. It’s like a cosmic post-it note from the past, reminding us that progress without wisdom is a hollow triumph. That humanity without humility becomes machinery. That even in utopia, the soul remains the final frontier.
In the end, Star of the Unborn isn’t for everyone. But for the seekers, the wanderers, the sci-fi philosophers, and the postmodern mystics—it’s a rare and radiant star in the literary cosmos. A long, strange, luminous trip. Worth every metaphysical mile.
June 15, 2013
To be completely honest, I made it to page 270 and I am going to call it "read." As much as I am appreciating the translation and writing, there is nothing Star of the Unborn is offering that I can really continue to absorb properly. I finally looked up Franz Werfel to learn more about the author, and I was amused to find that Thomas Mann is one of his literary heroes, and the structure of the book made a bit more sense to me. As one who has attempted Mann and am definitely not worthy of his writing, I find that Werfel's sci-fantasy follows much in the same footsteps, with interesting characters and events mired in deep, chapter-long conversations about politics, religion, and philosophy that I am lost trying to figure out. Still, for 1.00 it has definitely been worth the time to experience an epic of this sort from a German author writing in the 1940s.
March 21, 2025
A 1945/46 sci-fi(ish) take on the Divine Comedy (so, yeah, heavily religious, even more so than More or Bacon). Not being a fan of utopia/dystopia lit, I was mostly distracted whilst reading it and only persevered out of curiosity about the author and his literary influences. The "Hell" section was intriguing and made finishing this book less of a chore, definitely worth the effort.
Edit, having read R.A. Lafferty's the Past Master, which was largely an uncredited rip of the above. I have to admit that the Star of the Unborn has significantly gone up in my estimation since I first read it. I doubt I'd ever give it five stars, but I’m compelled to update it to a solid 4.
Edit, having read R.A. Lafferty's the Past Master, which was largely an uncredited rip of the above. I have to admit that the Star of the Unborn has significantly gone up in my estimation since I first read it. I doubt I'd ever give it five stars, but I’m compelled to update it to a solid 4.
April 27, 2022
Abgebrochen bei 30%. Der Schreibstil ist altertümlich aber flüssig zu lesen. Der Inhalt dagegen ist sehr kurzweilig und es bleibt nichts hängen.
April 6, 2025
Franz Werfel was an Austrian Jew, who, at the start of the 2nd World War, migrated first to France, then in 1940 to America, where he settled in Los Angeles. He was raised by a Catholic maid and brought into Catholic churches since childhood. Although never fully converting to Catholicism and always feeling the dualism of both religions, linked through the central figure of Jesus Christ, Catholicism won him over at the end of his life.
He wrote STAR OF THE UNBORN from 1943 to 1945, knowing, when he began writing, that he had a heart failure, that wouldn't leave him much time, dying only 2 Days after he finished the novel.
As STAR OF THE UNBORN mimics as a travel report, its protagonist being F.W., much of Werfel's life and beliefs play an important role throughout the book, not the least his experiences during WW1. What does not get mentioned, but of course is intertwined in the book's motives, is WW2 and fascism. The first chapter (or the so-described lack thereof) pays great tribute to that in mentioning that the first chapter gets left out to make room for the important thoughts to recent history.
This indeed is a great start to the moral reflections of the novel, and an early example of the clever language that Werfel so artistically weaves together.
But, oh, does he love his language to a fault. Over its 700 Pages in the German original, that could easily be compressed to 300, he rambles, turns mental loops, references every last poet, philosopher and religious figure, all this without saying much. But artistic it is. Werfel knows to write.
What got me interested in the Novel in the first place was the notion, that it should be one of the most interesting examples of utopian world building. Sadly, this is the weakest point of the book. Instead of creating a consistent world that builds a counter-draft to our own period, the world building reads like the fever dream of a child, every element coming out of thin air, often contradicting each other.
Even worse: What Werfel presents (I think, sincerely) as a utopian design of society, reads, in its heavy religious connotations, like hell on earth. It is in that aspect similar to C.S. Lewis' attempt of a Christian vision for mankind's future, where, in PERELANDRA, the second part of his space trilogy, the reader cannot help but root for the devil, whose arguments are just always better.
In the end, Werfel's societal design stays in ambiguity. Maybe rightly so, but with the lack of proper vision and consistent metaphors, the novel gets reduced to a string of satirical ramblings that make fun of our own society and most of the time end in religious moralizing. Because, of course, Kant's philosophy is heretic, and we all should find our peace in God.
He wrote STAR OF THE UNBORN from 1943 to 1945, knowing, when he began writing, that he had a heart failure, that wouldn't leave him much time, dying only 2 Days after he finished the novel.
As STAR OF THE UNBORN mimics as a travel report, its protagonist being F.W., much of Werfel's life and beliefs play an important role throughout the book, not the least his experiences during WW1. What does not get mentioned, but of course is intertwined in the book's motives, is WW2 and fascism. The first chapter (or the so-described lack thereof) pays great tribute to that in mentioning that the first chapter gets left out to make room for the important thoughts to recent history.
This indeed is a great start to the moral reflections of the novel, and an early example of the clever language that Werfel so artistically weaves together.
But, oh, does he love his language to a fault. Over its 700 Pages in the German original, that could easily be compressed to 300, he rambles, turns mental loops, references every last poet, philosopher and religious figure, all this without saying much. But artistic it is. Werfel knows to write.
What got me interested in the Novel in the first place was the notion, that it should be one of the most interesting examples of utopian world building. Sadly, this is the weakest point of the book. Instead of creating a consistent world that builds a counter-draft to our own period, the world building reads like the fever dream of a child, every element coming out of thin air, often contradicting each other.
Even worse: What Werfel presents (I think, sincerely) as a utopian design of society, reads, in its heavy religious connotations, like hell on earth. It is in that aspect similar to C.S. Lewis' attempt of a Christian vision for mankind's future, where, in PERELANDRA, the second part of his space trilogy, the reader cannot help but root for the devil, whose arguments are just always better.
In the end, Werfel's societal design stays in ambiguity. Maybe rightly so, but with the lack of proper vision and consistent metaphors, the novel gets reduced to a string of satirical ramblings that make fun of our own society and most of the time end in religious moralizing. Because, of course, Kant's philosophy is heretic, and we all should find our peace in God.
October 26, 2025
(Read this because of seeing Bookpilled reviewing it so enthusiastically; I got a copy from the library.) This was an interesting experience, but I think that going into it not being Catholic and not quite having enough historical context for Werfel's life and experience made it less enjoyable than it might otherwise have been. The writing is really good (in translation, but even so), and I absolutely love the slightly humorous, credulous tone throughout, which helps with the parts of the story where not much is happening. I think that the ideal place to encounter this book would be in a course on like...Christian existentialism, read after reading something by Kierkegaard or...I don't know enough about it, but the point is: this needs some context, and other science fiction books are not really the only necessary context. Along the way, though, this presents a really interesting critique of modernity, and a quite interesting utopian/dystopian future. If you can get your hands on it, and are interested in reading a kind of abstract theological science fiction, then I'd recommend it. Otherwise, I think it doesn't feel very essential, especially not if questions about religion don't really interest you.
(Weirdly, Albanians appear several times, though unfortunately as representatives of a rather 'wild' stereotype. In fact one of he things I found most frustrating about the book--against a science-fiction backdrop--was the degree to which I don't actually think Werfel was very critical of many of the social stereotypes that appear in the book.)
(Weirdly, Albanians appear several times, though unfortunately as representatives of a rather 'wild' stereotype. In fact one of he things I found most frustrating about the book--against a science-fiction backdrop--was the degree to which I don't actually think Werfel was very critical of many of the social stereotypes that appear in the book.)
December 17, 2018
ICH BIN FERTIG.
Endlich.
Das anstregendste Buch, das ich je gelesen hab. Wenn man später drüber nachdenkt, sind Werfels Zukunftsvisionen durchaus interessant und regen zum nachdenken an, vor allem wenn man seinen Wissenstand von 1945, seine Prognosen und unsere heutige Welt betrachtet.
Aber es zu lesen war halt sehr nervig. Manchmal konnte ich seitenweise nicht ganz folgen, manchmal hat es mich total gepackt.
3 Sterne für jetzt, vielleicht ändere ich die Bewertung, wenn ich noch länger über dieses Werk gegrübelt habe.
Ich habe dieses Buch gelesen für meine 2018 reading challenge: a book your dad loves. Meinem Vater bedeutet dieses Buch sehr viel. Wahrscheinlich hat er es öfter gelesen als einmal und auch länger darüber nachgedacht als ich. Zu ungefähr jeder gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung fällt ihm irgendeine Stelle in diesem Buch ein. Keine Ahnung, ob ich dem Buch so viel Relevanz beimessen würde, aber es war auf jeden Fall interessant, mal so zu sehen, was jemand, der einem nahe steht, gerne liest.
Endlich.
Das anstregendste Buch, das ich je gelesen hab. Wenn man später drüber nachdenkt, sind Werfels Zukunftsvisionen durchaus interessant und regen zum nachdenken an, vor allem wenn man seinen Wissenstand von 1945, seine Prognosen und unsere heutige Welt betrachtet.
Aber es zu lesen war halt sehr nervig. Manchmal konnte ich seitenweise nicht ganz folgen, manchmal hat es mich total gepackt.
3 Sterne für jetzt, vielleicht ändere ich die Bewertung, wenn ich noch länger über dieses Werk gegrübelt habe.
Ich habe dieses Buch gelesen für meine 2018 reading challenge: a book your dad loves. Meinem Vater bedeutet dieses Buch sehr viel. Wahrscheinlich hat er es öfter gelesen als einmal und auch länger darüber nachgedacht als ich. Zu ungefähr jeder gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung fällt ihm irgendeine Stelle in diesem Buch ein. Keine Ahnung, ob ich dem Buch so viel Relevanz beimessen würde, aber es war auf jeden Fall interessant, mal so zu sehen, was jemand, der einem nahe steht, gerne liest.
March 26, 2024
At times this book falls on a line between Dante's Inferno and Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota and is quite impressive. But most of the time it is overly verbose world building that feels more like a flowery Olaf Stapledon. Werfel led an interesting life and if you have the patience for it, the book is worth reading to see how he paints the rumination on that life on the blank canvas of a distant future earth.
October 6, 2025
I read this book when I was 15 & it changed the trajectory of my life. I want to re read it but I have an original copy that’s so delicate I’m scared to mess it up more than it already is so I need to find online. <3
June 20, 2019
Fucking hell. This book has interesting ideas, but that does not (in no way) justify 724 pages and even less the pathetic style and constant faux-humble meta-narration.
August 19, 2020
One of the best anticipation novels ever. Is not a regular cienci fiction, is more like metaphisics fiction. I love it. Have to copies of the first edition.
December 14, 2025
The most profound book I ever read (outside of the Bible). I can not articulate what it is all about, I am not Franz Werfel. But it is beautiful and haunting.
October 17, 2023
Weird story based on communication via the mental world, flecked with humanism and expressionist ideas that may have supplanted the psychedelics drugs that didn't become readily available to him until the next generation. Makes me wonder what astral plane he tapped into.
October 7, 2008
Franz Wertel, ça vous dit quelque chose ? Moi, avant ce roman, ça ne me disait rien. Maintenant, je sais que c’est un auteur allemand du début du siècle précédent. Pas un auteur de science-fiction, non, un pur auteur de "littérature générale" ! Et cet auteur a écrit un roman, dans la tradition de 1984 ou d’autres. La différence, c’est que ce roman est une authentique utopie, et non une dystopie. En effet, le monde qu’il y décrit, placé à des milliers d’années dans le futur, est devenu nettement plus élégant, plus aristocratique, en quelque sorte. Dans ce nouvel univers, le narrateur, qui n’est autre que l’auteur, ne nous fera pas vivre de glorieuses aventures. il ne nous mettra pas plus en contact avec l’Innomable. Non. L’étoile de ceux qui ne sont pas nés est, comme le dit le narrateur, un roman de découverte, où il va peu à peu découvrir tous les aspects de la vie dans cette civilisation "astro-mentale"(1). Et cette civilisation, qu’il découvre doucement, tant ses appartées sont longues, est tout-à-fait originale dans quasiment tous ses aspects. Bien sûr, Wertel, qui a écrit ce roman entre 1943 et 1945 à Los Angeles, ne nous abrutit jamais d’imbuvables descriptions techniques. Au lieu de ça, il nous invite à partager son étonnement devant ce monde complètement étranger, où une herbe grise recouvre quasiment tous les continents, où les maisons sont enterrées, et où nul n’envisagerait sereinement de manger un gigot. Ne vous inquiétez pas, il n’y a pas ici de spoilers, car ces éléments sont révélés dès le début du récit, pour nous permettre de mieux assimiler la suite des éléments du pouvoir temporel, spirituel et autres de cet étrange endroit. Car le principal écueil de ce livre, c’est peut-être sa principale qualité. En effet, l’auteur écrit très bien, et profite de la légèreté de sa plume pour plonger son lecteur dans des abimes descriptifs (au sujet desquels il s’excuse) ou des pensées sur ce bon vieux XXème siècle, qui font de ce livre foisonnant une espèce de pavé dont, au bout d’un moment, on se demande comment ou pourra sortir sans trop de soucis. Et c’est vraiment dommage. Car si ce livre avait été moins riche en digressions, la facilité d’écriture de l’auteur aurait pu en faire une oeuvre vraiment fabuleuse (même si le roman est, en l’état, déja très bien). Notez que ça n’ôte pas grand chose à mon enthousiasme à le recommander, je rajoute seulement à cette recommandation une exhortation au courage du lecteur : oui, ce roman est long, oui, certains passages sont parfois abscons, mais d’autres sont d’une telle beauté qu’il ne faut vraiment pas s’empêcher de découvrir une face complètement cachée de la littérature de l’imaginaire (car c’est le genre de bouquin où le termpe de science-fiction est manifestement hors de propos).
(1) Habituez-vous au terme, il risque fort de revenir régulièrement dans la conversation
(1) Habituez-vous au terme, il risque fort de revenir régulièrement dans la conversation
December 11, 2024
English below
Dieses Buch hat irgendetwas mit mir gemacht.
Und so schwer es mir fällt, zu identifizieren, was dieses "irgendetwas" ist, so leicht fällt es mir, von dieser Geschichte zu schwärmen:
Diese spielerische und doch umwerfende Sprache, die mehrdeutigen Figuren und Schauplätze, die Seitenhiebe zu Moderne und kapitalistischer Produktionsweise, die fieberträumerischen Erlebnisse des F.W., all das hat mich völlig in seinen Bann gezogen. Die vielen Situationen und Gespräche, in denen sich der Protagonist wiederfindet, sind mit so einer begeisternden Kreativität gestaltet, man spürt förmlich die Freude Franz Werfels am Träumen.
Es ist ein dicker Schinken! Doch keine Passage verging ohne mir etwas zu geben. Einen Denkanstoß, eine Perspektive auf das heutige (damalige) Leben, eine Traum-Lese-Erfahrung.
Ich verstehe jede Person, die dieses Buch ratlos beiseite legt. Doch umso mehr verstehe ich jede Person, die auf ewig an diese Erfahrung zurückdenkt und voller unerklärlicher Freude ist.
This book did something to me.
And as difficult as it is for me to identify what this ‘something’ is, it is just as easy for me to romanticize about this story:
This playful yet dazzling language, the ambiguous characters and settings, the sideswipes at modernity and capitalist modes of production, F.W.'s fever-dreamy experiences, all of this completely mesmerised me. The many situations and conversations in which the protagonist finds himself are characterised by such inspiring creativity that you can literally feel Franz Werfel's joy in dreaming.
It's a thick book! But not a single passage went by without giving me something. Food for thought, a perspective on life today (back then), a dream-reading experience.
I understand every person who puts this book aside in bewilderment. But I understand even more every person who thinks back to this experience forever and is full of inexplicable joy.
Dieses Buch hat irgendetwas mit mir gemacht.
Und so schwer es mir fällt, zu identifizieren, was dieses "irgendetwas" ist, so leicht fällt es mir, von dieser Geschichte zu schwärmen:
Diese spielerische und doch umwerfende Sprache, die mehrdeutigen Figuren und Schauplätze, die Seitenhiebe zu Moderne und kapitalistischer Produktionsweise, die fieberträumerischen Erlebnisse des F.W., all das hat mich völlig in seinen Bann gezogen. Die vielen Situationen und Gespräche, in denen sich der Protagonist wiederfindet, sind mit so einer begeisternden Kreativität gestaltet, man spürt förmlich die Freude Franz Werfels am Träumen.
Es ist ein dicker Schinken! Doch keine Passage verging ohne mir etwas zu geben. Einen Denkanstoß, eine Perspektive auf das heutige (damalige) Leben, eine Traum-Lese-Erfahrung.
Ich verstehe jede Person, die dieses Buch ratlos beiseite legt. Doch umso mehr verstehe ich jede Person, die auf ewig an diese Erfahrung zurückdenkt und voller unerklärlicher Freude ist.
This book did something to me.
And as difficult as it is for me to identify what this ‘something’ is, it is just as easy for me to romanticize about this story:
This playful yet dazzling language, the ambiguous characters and settings, the sideswipes at modernity and capitalist modes of production, F.W.'s fever-dreamy experiences, all of this completely mesmerised me. The many situations and conversations in which the protagonist finds himself are characterised by such inspiring creativity that you can literally feel Franz Werfel's joy in dreaming.
It's a thick book! But not a single passage went by without giving me something. Food for thought, a perspective on life today (back then), a dream-reading experience.
I understand every person who puts this book aside in bewilderment. But I understand even more every person who thinks back to this experience forever and is full of inexplicable joy.
May 20, 2024
Will you like this novel? Depends on whether you think you'd like Franz Werfel, because, among other concerns, he paints a self-portrait here. Born to a German-speaking Jewish family in 19th-century Europe, Werfel fought in WW1. After the war, he wrote poetry, plays, and novels. The Nazis burned his books and forced him to flee Europe for southern California. Near the end of WW2, doctors diagnosed him with heart failure. As the most cataclysmic war in human history drew to a close, Werfel sat down to write his final novel, Star of the Unborn. In it, he projects himself thousands of years into the future and speculates about the fate of humanity.
May 2, 2024
At first I thought the book was interesting and entertaining. As it progressed, it started to read like a weird fever dream. By the time I was finished, I wished I could go back in time and stop myself from reading it. It is going to haunt me for a long time and not in a good way.
July 30, 2025
Instead of chapter titles on every right page, this book has unique titles summarizing the page. It’s a really fun way to flip through the book and quickly remember the immense and bizarre world Werfel builds throughout this work.
A few of the “page titles” are as follows:
Science Versus Divination
So I’m A Departed Spirit
The Travel-Puzzle
The Sun Transparency
A Curious Wedding Present
Furlough From Purgatory
The Universe Breathes
Referee IO-F.W.
The Third Stage Of Death
The Artificial Mountain
Comet Calisthenics
Mary Magdalene
The High Floater
The Shape of Man
Into The Earth’s Interior
The Animator
Djebel And Wintergarden
Twenty-Six Trillion Cells
Retrovolution
The Lake Of Disremembrance
The Isochronion
If these don’t inspire some deep intrigue, what will?
Franz Werfel is the main character in his own book as he mysteriously resurrects 100,000 years into the future. He addresses the reader and breaks the fourth wall in interesting ways and this mechanic works well. Diving deep into utopian/dystopian societies; investigating religion, spirituality and faith, mortality and purpose; and some spectacular odysseys into the solar system.
Portions of this book were a bit long and tedious while many other portions were astounding 6-star passages of profound invention and beauty where I welled up with exhilaration, joy, and awe. Franz Werfel, you have definitely found a new fan!!!
A few of the “page titles” are as follows:
Science Versus Divination
So I’m A Departed Spirit
The Travel-Puzzle
The Sun Transparency
A Curious Wedding Present
Furlough From Purgatory
The Universe Breathes
Referee IO-F.W.
The Third Stage Of Death
The Artificial Mountain
Comet Calisthenics
Mary Magdalene
The High Floater
The Shape of Man
Into The Earth’s Interior
The Animator
Djebel And Wintergarden
Twenty-Six Trillion Cells
Retrovolution
The Lake Of Disremembrance
The Isochronion
If these don’t inspire some deep intrigue, what will?
Franz Werfel is the main character in his own book as he mysteriously resurrects 100,000 years into the future. He addresses the reader and breaks the fourth wall in interesting ways and this mechanic works well. Diving deep into utopian/dystopian societies; investigating religion, spirituality and faith, mortality and purpose; and some spectacular odysseys into the solar system.
Portions of this book were a bit long and tedious while many other portions were astounding 6-star passages of profound invention and beauty where I welled up with exhilaration, joy, and awe. Franz Werfel, you have definitely found a new fan!!!
May 13, 2016
Shortly after finishing this book in 1945, author Franz Werfel died in his California exile - to where he escaped from the Nazi terror (in his real life) and to where he returned to from his time journey to the astromental life 100.000 years in the future. There is hardly any other book of such genius fantasy coupled with human philosophy.
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