Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a story-parable written by Richard Bach. Describes the seagull, who studied life and the art of flying. It can also be considered a sermon on self-improvement and self-sacrifice, a manifesto of boundless spiritual freedom.

First published in 1970 under the name Jonathan Livingston Seagull (born Jonathan Livingston Seagull - a story). By the end of 1972, over a million copies of the book had been printed. Publisher Reader's Digest released a version of the book, which became a bestseller in 38 weeks (according to the rating of the newspaper New York Times). As of 2006, this version is still being printed.

Bach himself claimed that the story was written under the impression of real flights of the "stunning" pilot - John H. "Johnny" Livingston - from 1920 to 1930. The first Russian translation was published in 1974, in the journal Foreign Literature No. 12.

In 2014, Richard Bach supplemented the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull unpublished earlier the fourth part. The Russian translation was published in 2015.

A seagull named Jonathan Livingston, from his youth, discourages the senselessness and narrowness of the existence of seagulls, concerned only with the daily struggle for sustenance. Embraced by a passion for excellence, Jonathan is fully devoted to studying flight as an art and way of being, and not as a way of moving in space for food. At a certain moment, he finds himself unable to put up with the rules of the primitive existence of the society of gulls. Being expelled from the pack, Jonathan leads the idyllic life of the hermit and does not suffer at all from loneliness, wholly giving in to perfection of the skill of the flight. According to the story in 1973, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was shot.