by Hermann Hesse
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Product Description
The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature
Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Contrived Style, 2008-09-25
i'm a big fan of the author's Steppenwolf: A Novel, it's one of my favorites.
the glass bead game or magister ludi is written in a completely different style. it uses an unsuccessfully contrived intellectual manner that is stilted, pedantic, decorous, circuitous and, to me, quite a chore to read.
otherwise, i agree with Anyechka's 3-star review. the glass bead game is bloated and generally immobile. some successful authors, once they realize that anything they write will be printed and read, will indulge their disdain for the market that controlled their lives for so long. i suspect that's what this book is about.
i allow myself to disagree with Nobel prizes. some are reflections of an unripe field and some are political. Hesse's was both.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Most important fiction of the XXth Century?, 2008-07-24
The modern idealists' guiding light.
"The Glass Bead Game" could be the most important work of fiction of the Twentieth Century. Rather than addressing symptoms, it addresses underlying spiritual, philosophical, and academic short-comings that crippled human growth in the XXth Century. The plot is both very straight forward, a biography of a man who is promoted to the highest academic office in his land, then goes through a crisis of professional conscience and resigns to obscurity, and very complex, almost rococo with delicate themes woven through out the larger story.
The only caveat is that this book will be slow going until one has completed a couple of years of college. Some of his characters are academic archetypes, and unless you have spent time in the company of people who behave like that, they can be implausible.
Simply by the conceptual scale of the book, it is hard to appreciate in a single reading. It is devoid of action, relationships are muted and subtle, but the vision of a society that appreciates selfless intellectual achievement is inspiring. At the same time it carries cautions about how noble endeavors can fail.
I can't recommend this one highly enough. At the same time I probably shouldn't read it again; developing a social conscience at my time of life is not seemly.
E.M. Van Court
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The best Hesse's book, 2008-05-04
First time I read it when I was 15, and I thought it was one of the best books I've ever read. One has to be prepared to read this book and to be able to accept all: strange combination of math, music, language, different ideas, search for harmony. I reread this book every 2-3 years.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
His best work, 2007-09-19
Although Hesse is not in fashion among academics these days, this book (unlike some of his earlier more romantic stuff) deserves to be noticed as a great work of the 20th century. It's very complex, and can be frustrating (especially if you have little or no knowledge of German history, literature and music); it's nevertheless an important, and often very moving reflection on the nature of modern society (and isn't yet outdated), and equally on some of the dangers of trying to escape that society.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Not Free SF Reader, 2007-09-03
I suppose you could say this was more than a little impenetrable. Especially if you have no interest in games, mathematics, or any of that sort of thing. I read it when a friend loaned it to me after reading it enjoying it. I didn't mind it, but not usually the style of thing I will be searching out. A definite change of page though.
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