Demian: the story of a youth (Aziloth Books) - Softcover

Hesse, Hermann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 191140539X ISBN 13: 9781911405399

Publisher: Aziloth Books, 2017

Synopsis

Hermann Hesse was born in 1877 at Calw, Germany, into a scholarly and deeply religious family.  Hesse’s “tyrannical temperament, and passionate turbulence” led to conflict with his strait-laced parents and his adolescence was unhappy – brief stints at a variety of different schools culminating in a suicide attempt and a short stay in a mental institution. Determined to become a writer, Hesse used these unfortunate experiences as the basis of many of his critically acclaimed books, including the present work.

Demian is the story of a young boy, Emil Sinclair, and his quest for personal development as he grows into manhood - a process that brings him up against many strange characters and even stranger theories of life’s true purpose.  His ‘spiritual guide’ in this endeavour is Max Demian, an enigmatic youth who befriends the troubled Emil and, with the help of his mother Frau Eva, gradually brings him to a deeper understanding of his innermost self.

The book is at once a poignant coming-of-age story and an impassioned  enquiry into the truth behind the confusing, and often contradictory, world-systems as espoused by Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Daoism and Hinduism. Shot through with writings of such luminaries as Carl Gustav Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche,  Demian is an exhilarating exploration of what it means to be young and human, and the oftimes tortuous path towards some form of enlightenment.

About this title

Review

Hesse is not a traditional teller of tales but a novelist of ideas and a moralist of a high order...The autobiographical undercurrent gives Demian an Existentialist intensity and a depth of understanding that are rare in contemporary fiction. (Saturday Review)

Beautifully written, it has a seriousness as compelling as as that of The Waste Land . . . the work of a major writer (Observer)

One can neither date nor doubt the sincerity of the hero s search for satisfaction or the quality of the spirit that lies behind it (Times Literary Supplement)

From the Back Cover

'Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to follow the path that leads to himself'

Emil grows up the creature of two worlds: the safe, clean, respectable world of parents and school, and another world - a place of danger and mystery, servants' gossip and ghost stories, the dark currents that run under the surface. As he struggles between light and darkness, only the guidance of his friend and mentor Max Demian can lead him on a journey towards self-realization, in Hesse's fable of adolescent awakening and spiritual enlightenment.

'Beautifully written, it has a seriousness as compelling as that of The Waste Land' Observer

'Rich and strange' New York Review of Books

'Hermann Hesse is the poet of the interior journey' Timothy Leary

Edition details

• Publisher: Aziloth Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 191140539X
• ISBN 13: 9781911405399
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112