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Translated from the German by W.J. Strachan
Published shortly after the First World War, Demian
is considered to be one of Hermann Hesse’s finest novels.
Emil Sinclair boasts of a theft that he has not committed
and subsequently finds himself blackmailed by a bully. He
turns to Max Demian, in whom he finds a friend and spiritual
mentor. This strangely self-possessed figure is able to lure
him out of his ordinary home-life and convince him of an existing
alternative world of corruption and evil. He progressing from
an orthodox education through to philosophical mysticism,
Emil’s search for self-awareness culminates in a meeting
with Demian’s mother — symbol and personification
of motherhood.
‘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
‘Hesse’s style is individual and his view of the
world strikingly original.’ – Sunday Telegraph
HERMANN HESSE, counted among the leading thinkers of
the twentieth century, 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. |
