The novel “The Other Sea” begins in Trieste, where Claudio Magris lives since childhood (he was born in 1939), and where, as in a port city, different peoples and cultures have long intersected, European and world ways. From here, on November 28, 1909, the hero Enrico Mreule goes on his long journey. We don’t know why Enrico is leaving Europe, and what he is trying to achieve. External motive - unwillingness to serve in the hated army, generally live in the atmosphere of a militarized, hierarchical Habsburg Empire. Arriving in South America, Enrico is engaged in cattle grazing, wanders around Patagonia, lives one - quite wild - life there, returns to Europe, teaches Latin, marries and lives another life - quite cultural, but equally external. The novel widely presents a very peculiar culture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which ended with the First World War, as well as interesting Latin American observations of the hero. But the main thing for Enrico Mreule, a European intellectual, rooted in the tradition of his culture, but constantly appealing to the cultures of others, as much to his loved ones, occurs in the field of the spirit. And his thought hovers mainly in the field of philosophy, history and religion.