Tales of Student Life

by Hermann Hesse, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Theodore Ziolkowski (Introduction)

Fictional accounts of German student life in three different historical periods center on the relationships among young men and attempts to reconcile the spiritual and the secular

Genres: Literature, Fiction

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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.

Reviews

[Carlos]

Even though I absolutely love Hesse’s novels, his endless collections of short stories will always have a special place in my heart. Not only does he treat the reader to countless, brilliantly told erwachsene Märchen, these small stories also contain the kernel of the psychological novels to come, allowing the familiar reader to see the progress in the development of these ideas.

[Michael Klick]

Several great stories in this one. I think Herman Hesse is great and can’t get enough. Stories, apparently semi-autobiographical, involving his time in school and his views that educational systems and internal and external pressures to perform are soul crushing. Excellent depiction of the intricacies of relationships.

[Elibardo Villegas]

Fictional accounts of German student life in three different historical periods center on the relationships among young men and attempts to reconcile the spiritual and the secular life.

[Noam]

The main 'tales' are great - but the previously unpublished The Fourth Life, originally designed to be included in The Glass Bead Game along with the other three 'lives', is just on another level! Such melancholy resignation toward the ineluctable, wildly and passionately twisted and diverged toward another path!
4.5/5