Hermann Hesse
3 books
- You follow Emil Sinclair as Demian unsettles his neat ideas about good and evil, and the book’s inward, dreamlike questioning lingers more than its plot. It can feel earnest and slightly mysterious, but if you like spiritual coming-of-age stories, its struggle toward a self-made identity has real pull.
- You'll like how Siddhartha refuses easy answers, even walking away from the Buddha himself because secondhand wisdom won't do. It's quiet and slow, more river than plot, and the old ferryman Vasudeva might stay with you for years.
- You follow Harry Haller, a lonely, self-dramatizing intellectual who despises the bourgeois world while secretly needing its warmth. The novel gets increasingly strange, especially in the Treatise and the Magic Theater, and its messy argument with despair feels more honest than comforting.