(Magister Ludi)
translated from the German "Das Glasperlenspiel" by
Richard and Clara Winston
with a foreword by
Theodore Ziolkowski
Copyright © 1990 Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Designed by Patricia de Groot
Cover design and illustration copyright © 1990
ISBN 0-8050-1246-x
$13.95
The Glass Bead Game, for which Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, was the author's last and crowning achievement, the most imaginative and prophetic of all his novels. It is the evolution - and resolution - of the terrors and dilemmas of Steppenwolf, Demian, and Siddhartha. Setting this story in some distant, post-World War III future, Hesse tells of an elite cult of intellectuals occupying themselves with an elaborate game that employs all of the cultural and scientific knowledge of the ages. Described by Thomas Mann as a "treasure of purest thought," admired by André Gide and T.S. Eliot, this prophetic novel has striking contemporary application and is the key to a full understanding of Hesse's thought. | |