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Hermann Hesse Message Board 1/1/2012
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Hesse has written!

Author Hesse's Book Reviews

Beneath the Wheel
An intellectual gifted boy goes to a prestigious boarding school and meets a rebellious friend who changes his outlook on life. Hans Giebenrath is a gifted student who has to decide what he wants out of life. At the beginning of the book, Hans lives in a small town in Germany with his father, who puts a lot of pressure to study and do well on his exams, in order to be accepted to a prestigious boarding school. Hans is nervous about doing well on his ex...
Demian
With World War I looming, Emil Sinclair begins a "coming of age" journey in his small town. He fights his internal fears at the hands of the school bully, Franz Kromer. He revolts against his proper upbringing at the urging of a new acquaintance, Max Demian. Max Demian invites Sinclair into a new realm of thought, teaching him the virtues of revolting against conventional thought, and provoking in him the confidence to think and act for himself....
Narcissus and Goldmund
This novel, set in the middle ages, follows the lives of two close friends whose lives take them on differing paths. Narcissus is the devoutly spiritual monk. He values his self-reflective cloistered life of scholarly study and worship. He is neither willing nor wanting to venture from the regimented and ordered life in the monastery. His best friend, Goldmund is restless with his life so he sets out to wander the world and to find meaning in the phy...
Siddhartha
Siddhartha is a young man living with the Brahmin. While he is supposed to continue his life inside the community, Siddhartha, who is searching for spiritual enlightment, decides to leave the community with his best friend, Govinda. In his attempts to find enlightment, Siddhartha becomes homeless. He fasts and mediates, trying to reach enlightment in the most common way in India, but once again fails. He and Govinda also meet Buddha, but while Govinda d...

Hesse booklist

Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf is the story of Harry Haller, a recluse among society who feels his existence has become a heavy burden. He rents a room from a middle aged woman and her nephew, where he resides for six to eight months. He has very little to do with the pleasures of life, and spends most of his days in his room with his books, and most of his nights in lonely taverns. Though he is an intelligent man who once had many stimulating conversations with noble scho...
The Glass Bead Game
Joseph Knecht grows from an unassuming child to the leader of an esoteric order that exists to demonstrate the true nature of reality to the world. At some time in, centuries in a future, a young boy named Joseph Knecht is recruited to study within the austere order of the Castalians. All members of the order are boys and are brought in as young children. The boys study a diversity of intellectual, philosophical, and artistic topics in the hope that they...
Under the wheel
Hans Giebenrath is a boy who lives with his father in a small town. This boy is very intelligent and he is preparing for the exams of a religion school. He was second in the exams of the elite of Germany and so he was allowed to fulfill his dream and enter the school. But in the school he realised that what he wanted was not to be the best, but to find a true friend. The whole society tried to make him abandon the friendship and to make him concentrate o...