Demian - Couverture souple

HERMANN HESSE is numbered among the leading figures of twentieth-century literature. Born in Germany in 1877, he rebelled against his stern monastic education later working as a locksmith and a bookseller before embarking on a 65-year writing career. His first major success came with his novels Peter Camenzind (1904) and Untern Rad (1905; translated as The Prodigy). These were followed by Gertrud (1910), Rosshalde (1914), Demian (1919) and Siddartha (1921). After a visit to India in 1911, he settled in Switzerland in opposition to German militarism, and he worked for the Red Cross during the First World War. His later novels included Der Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss und Goldmund (1930) and Das Glasperlenspiel (1943; translated as Magister Ludi). His books were denounced by the Nazis, but in 1946 he achieved world recognition on being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1963 aged eighty-five.

In Demian, one of the great writers of the twentieth century tells the dramatic story of young, docile Emil Sinclair's descent--led by precocious shoolmate Max Demian--into a secret and dangerous world of petty crime and revolt against convention and eventual awakening to selfhood.

"The electrifying influence exercised on a whole generation just after the First World War by Demian...is unforgettable. With uncanny accuracy this poetic work struck the nerve of the times and called forth grateful rapture from a whole youthful generation who believed that an interpreter of their innermost life had risen from their own midst."
-- From the Introduction by Thomas Mann