A single volume of the most beautiful texts by Herman Hesse including intimate memories of his final years. Hesse collected life sketches, poems, aphorisms and short essays dedicated to the ultimate challenge of a writer who had already accomplished a celebrated body of work -- that of accepting his final years and the approach of death with grace.

In the spring of 1922, several months after completing Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse wrote a fairy tale that was also a love story, inspired by the woman who was to become his second wife. That story, Pictor’s Metamorphoses, is the centerpiece of this anthology of Hesse’s luminous short fiction. Based on The Arabian Nights and the work of the Brothers Grimm, the nineteen stories collected here represent a half century of Hesse's short writings. They display the full range of Hesse’s lifetime fascination with fantasy--as dream, fairy tale, satire, or allegory.

Hermann Hesse's voyage to the East Indies, recorded in journal entries and other writings translated into English for the first time, describes the experiences that influenced his greatest works. "I knew but few of the trees and animals that I saw around me by name, I was unable to read the Chinese inscriptions, and could exchange only a few words with the children, but nowhere in foreign lands have I felt so little like a foreigner and so completely enfolded by the self-existing naturalness of life's clear river as I did here." In 1911, Hermann Hesse sailed through southeastern Asian waters on a trip that would define much of his later writing. Hesse brings his unique eye to scenes such as adventures in a rickshaw, watching foreign theater performances, exploring strange floating cities on stilts, and luxuriating in the simple beauty of the lush natural landscape. Even in the doldrums of travel, he records his experience with faithful humor, wit, and...

Throughout his life, Herman Hesse was a devoted letter writer. He corresponded, not just with friends and family, but also with his readers. From his letters home from the seminary at age fourteen, to his last letters, written days before his death at eighty-five, this selection gives a sense of the author of some of the most widely read books of the century.