Customer Reviews

Hermann Hesse: Life and Art

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This book is an incredibly researched biography. As one reviewer puts it on the back cover, Mileck's familiarity with Hesse's vast body of works "borders on omniscience." This is NOT, however, a standard biography in the sense of a straight-forward telling of the author's life. Mileck's intent is to show the relation between Hesse's life and work, most of which is highly autobiographical in nature. The majority of the content is literary criticism as opposed to biography. Another caveat- one must be very comfortable with, at the very least, Hesse's major novels to follow many of the points Mileck tries to make. I had read five of his novels before starting this book, all in the two past years, and still found myself overwhelmed by much of what he said. As research, and as a critical biography dealing concurrently with Hesse's body of literature, this is a wonderful book. It is not, however, intended for "beginners."

If you liked such masterpieces as 'Demian' 'Steppenwolf' and 'Siddhartha',you must know who is the one who stands behind those marvelous works.Those books have influenced my life a lot, and I think of Hesse as my teacher and my friend. That`s why I wanted to know more about this Nobel prize winner,and this book gave me all the informations I wanted to know.