About the Author

Counted among the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, Hermann Hesse was born in 1877. Rebelling against a stern monastic education, he worked as a locksmith and a bookseller before embarking on a 65-year writing career. Having travelled as far as India, he settled in Switzerland in 1911 in opposition to German militarism. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946,he died in 1963 aged eighty-five.

Reviews

'A great writer ... complex, subtle, allusive.' - New York Times Book Review '[Hesse's] simplicity belies galaxies of knowledge in motion--history, theology, psychology, philosophy. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Gide, Thomas Mann rightly called Hesse a master.'--Life ' a moving fable of spiritual growth with many attractive qualities' - JohnWain, Observer