Throughout his creative journey, Hesse was preoccupied with thoughts on the fate of the world, art, and civilization. The writer began working on his major novel, "The Glass Bead Game," a couple of years before the fascists came to power, published it in 1943—a turning point in the Second World War—and received the Nobel Prize for it in 1946. In this book, described by Thomas Mann as "joyfully mysterious" and written amidst an atmosphere of universal militarization and barbarism, Hesse poses the ultimate question: how can the individual and the spiritual essence be saved during a period of cultural collapse and moral decline?
Without attempting to depict the realities of a global catastrophe, he proposed his own path—an escape from society, a retreat into a world of "pure art" and the search for "eternal truth," into the beautiful fictional land of Castalia, where the intellectual elite of the future devotedly immerse themselves in the Glass Bead Game.
Due to the complexity of its structure, the interweaving of many genre forms, and its wealth of symbolism, terminology, and concepts from various fields of culture, the novel was not understood or accepted by everyone, yet it immediately sparked intense debate and became a spiritual guide for entire generations across the world.
The edition also includes the allegorical novella "Journey to the East."
Author: Hermann Hesse
Translation: Ekaterina Shukshina, Solomon Apt
Pages: 608 (printed). Hardcover
Dimensions: 135x207x35 mm
Series: Classics Library
