The Glass Bead Game, for which Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, is the author’s last and crowning achievement, the most imaginative and prophetic of all his novels. Setting the story in the distant postapocalyptic future, Hesse tells of an elite cult of intellectuals who play an elaborate game that uses all the cultural and scientific knowledge of the Ages. The Glass Bead Game is … Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature.
This edition features a Foreword by Theodore Ziolkowski that places the book in the full context of Hesse’s thought.
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It’s easaty to see even in the early reading why Hesse won a Nobel for Majister Ludi! The book contains wisdoms expressed through characterizations that are accessible through its aesthetic presentation!
More inspirational and wise when both the book and I were younger. It is dated now in a way it was not in the 60s. But it is still a great book by a great, if a bit depressing, mind. Certainly worth the very long read.
one wins the nobel prize for contributions to literature, not for a single work. that aside, it is a marvelous way for Hesse to have bowed off the stage.
I have read this book several times over the years. It is my favorite Hess novel and perhaps my favorite book of all time. The intellectual and spiritual theme is so engrossing. The Glass Bead Game assumes an all-important factor in the book and stimulates parallel thoughts in the realm of physics and music. I cant recommend this story more …
This book was formative in my early years. I had an amazing epiphany when reading one of the short tales in the end. Like most of Hesse’s work, it’s serious and spiritual, and can be used as a learning experience, rather than just entertainment. If you’re looking for an easy read, this most likely ain’t it.
The Glass Bead Game imagines a world where music and philosophy together are the core of human tradition. In this brilliant work, Hesse invites us to explore the metaphysical and at the same time criticize this culture’s ivory tower of Glass Bead Game Players for being so disconnected from the society they preside over. All of these concepts are …
Well, I have to give this book five stars even though I never actually found out what The Glass Bead Game was, what its rules were, how it was played, etc. Some how that didn’t matter. Possibly the German, “Das Glasperlenspiel” has an understood meaning in that language which has ‘got lost in translation’?
The simple story is of Joseph Knecht …
Hesse has the unique ability to use his fiction as a vehicle for defining the ideal. In his epic The Glass Bead Game, he pursues a grand philosophical assessment of universal knowledge through the tale of the hero, Joseph Knecht. Taking place in a distant decade of the 21st Century, the story concerns an intellectual society pursuing an eclectic …