Ldp Litterature: Le Jeu Des Perles de Verre (Paperback)

from wirkman

This was the last prose fiction of Hesse's I read, and I read it over 20 years ago. Much of it is dim memory now, but I do remember my impression: this was the best of Hesse's books. Long, slow, thoughtful, brilliant -- a strange utopia, or dystopia. It seemed the most mature book by the author p...

from gbsallery

The Times reviewed this as "one of the most important books of the century, in any language". I have no reason to disagree. Rich in scope yet simply humane, Hesse weaves a pattern from the threads of a life which helps us understand the tapestry of our own. The person who cannot gain some morsel ...

from DellaWanna

I'm glad that I came late to this book because I don't believe I would have had the emotional maturity to take this journey earlier in my life. The numerous passages that I copied into my notebook may not have resonated in my earlier years. This is an immersive meditation on the tension between t...

from Cecrow

This novel of a distant future is presented as a scholarly work about the life of Joseph Knecht, a man who rose to distinction as the master (i.e. Magister Ludi) of the Glass Bead Game. The game itself is vaguely described but consists of extrapolating relationships between disparate bodies of kn...

from jakjonsun

Glass Bead Game is the most complex of Hesse's work. I think the mistake people make is taking the characters, plot, setting in literal terms. Ultimately, Glass Bead Game is best appreciated as metaphor -- an elaborate, detail-rich metaphor of the unconscious struggle with the world of conception...