The Glass Bead Game

Winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature, Hermann Hesse's final novel is a thought-provoking tale of the pursuit of knowledge in a post-apocalyptic world.
In The Glass Bead Game, Hesse imagines a distant future where an elite group of intellectuals engage in an elaborate game that synthesizes all the cultural and scientific knowledge of the Ages. This game serves as the foundation for a society that has risen from the ashes of a great catastrophe.
Hesse's prophetic vision of a world shaped by the pursuit of wisdom is a captivating exploration of the complexity of modern life. The Glass Bead Game stands as a classic of 20th-century literature, a crowning achievement from one of Germany's most renowned authors.
This edition features a foreword by Theodore Ziolkowski that places the novel in the context of Hesse's broader philosophical and literary oeuvre.