Demian

Hesse is not a traditional teller of tales but a novelist of ideas and a moralist of a high order…The autobiographical undercurrent gives Demian an Existentialist intensity and a depth of understanding that are rare in contemporary fiction. * Saturday Review *Beautifully written, it has a seriousness as compelling as as that of The Waste Land … the work of a major writer * Observer *One can neither date nor doubt the sincerity of the hero s search for satisfaction or the quality of the spirit that lies behind it – Times Literary Supplement

Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. After a short period at a seminary he moved to Switzerland to work as a bookseller. During the First World War he worked for the Red Cross. His later novels - most importantly Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narcissus und Goldmund (1930) and The Glass Bead Game (1943) - and his poems and critical essays established him as one of the towering literary figures of the German-speaking world. He won many literary awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hermann Hesse died in 1962.