Peter Camenzind / Demian

by Hermann Hesse

Due racconti della giovinezza. Nel 1904, a soli 27 anni, Hesse raggiunse, con la pubblicazione di Peter Camenzin, un successo scritto con semplicita' ed eleganza, questo ritratto-autoritratto di un giovano sognatore e introverso che attraversa l'adolescenza giungendo alla cosiddetta maturita' con la consapevolezza di dover sacrificare qualche sogno e un po' di se stesso per il bene comune. Del 1919 e' invece Demian, libro assolutamente inaspettato, audace, che accese le fantasie delle giovani generazioni uscite dal conflitto mondiale e acconto trionfalmente dalla critica.

252 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 1993

About the author

Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946.

Other best-known works of this poet, novelist, and painter include The Glass Bead Game , which, also known as Magister Ludi, explore a search of an individual for spirituality outside society.

In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Young Germans desiring a different and more "natural" way of life at the time of great economic and technological progress in the country, received enthusiastically Peter Camenzind , first great novel of Hesse.

Throughout Germany, people named many schools. In 1964, people founded the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis, awarded biennially, alternately to a German-language literary journal or to the translator of work of Hesse to a foreign language. The city of Karlsruhe, Germany, also associates a Hermann Hesse prize.