HESSE, Hermann.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Das Glasperlenspiel. First edition of Hesse's utopian, futuristic novel. His final and longest work, it was a major factor in his receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.Das Glasperlenspiel was written over a period of more than a decade and published in 1943, while Hesse was in exile in Switzerland. In the same year, his name was placed on the blacklist of authors in Germany. Thomas Mann, Hesse's fellow Nobel laureate and friend, famously described the work as "a great novel of education" (quoted in Roberts, p. 41). A metaphor for the game of life, the novel is "rooted in autobiography... Hesse's whole person, the world in which he lived, the details and rhythm of his life, his agonies, ideals, and his view of man, society and Western civilization permeate Das Glasperlenspiel" (Mileck, p. 283).The novel has been available in English translation since 1949, initially with the title Magister Ludi and later as The Glass Bead Game.

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