Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31960 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
This book comes with a new foreword by Graham Coxon. Narcissus is a teacher at Mariabronn, a monastery in medieval Germany, and Goldmund is his favourite pupil. While Narcissus remains detached from the world in prayer and meditation, Goldmund runs away from the monastery in pursuit of love. Thereafter, he lives a picaresque wanderer's life, his amatory adventures resulting in pain as well as ecstasy. His eventual reunion with Narcissus brings into focus the diversity between artist and thinker, Dionysian and Apollonian.

Customer Reviews

A great masterpiece
I agree with the other reviewers, a masterpiece. A book to grip you, make you think, make you breathe deep, make you cry, laugh, feel the pain and ecstacy of Narziss and Golmund. A book of the Middle Ages but of all time also. Thrilling and violent and yet gentle.......

If there were 50 stars I'd give it that!

Totally superb
Although I have to confess that Hesse is my favourite author, this is my absolute favourite book ever. Hesse is an absolute master writer and his tales can often live in your head for a long while after you close the covers; while they are open, each line captures you. This book is, in my opinion, one of his very best and a brilliant view into aspects of the pale psyche too.

In all, most highly recommended!

unexpected joy
As with the other comment on this book, this is also the first Hesse i've read, but surely not the last. Really impressed, if i had read a page at random in Whsmith's i think might have put it back down, as a times it reads like a fairytale and you do need to suspend everything you know about the modern age to fully get into the spirit of the book,

but then when you do that, you find a resonance in everything that happens to our trusted wayfarer, Goldmund, and you start to scratch beneath the surface of Hesse's story, and its sentiment keeps unfolding before you on the page. Then you're at the end, and you need to go back and check for what you missed.

And Graham Coxon's introduction is really sweet as well.