[2] The key theme in the novel is the figure of the Anarch, the inwardly-free individual who lives quietly and dispassionately within but not of society and the world.

The Anarch is a metaphysical ideal figure of a sovereign individual, conceived by Jünger.

Indeed, the Anarch starts out from Stirner's conception of the unique (der Einzige), a man who forms a bond around something concrete rather than ideal,[4][5] but it is then developed in subtle but critical ways beyond Stirner's concept.

Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian.

As a historian, I know what can be offered.The Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist.Publishers Weekly reviewed the book in 1994: "In this acute if labyrinthine study of a compromised individual, [Jünger] telescopes past and present, playing over the sweep of Western history and culture with a dazzling range of allusions from Homer and Nero to Poe and Lenin, displaying his erudition but failing to ignite the reader's engaged interest.