Emil Sinclair is a troubled young outsider. But everything changes when he meets Max Demian, a mysterious and charismatic older student, who reveals the glittering possibilities that lie beyond conventional thinking and ordinary life. Under the intoxicating influence of his new mentor, Emil sets out on a journey of spiritual fulfilment, as he wrestles with the boundaries between illusion and truth, purity and corruption. Teeming with psychological insight, Demian is a profound and enduring exploration of adolescent awakening from Nobel Prize-winner Hermann Hesse.

'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 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

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was born in Württemberg, Germany. He resented his pious and repressive upbringing, and was determined to be "a writer or nothing else". His writing was greatly influenced by his travels to Asia and through his friendship with psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In 1946 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Several of his novels are available or forthcoming from Pushkin Press Classics, including Siddartha, Narcissus and Goldmund and Journey to the East.