Herman Hesse is a difficult author who requires active empathy and co-creation from the reader. But at the same time, this writer has managed to become incredibly popular among completely different groups of readers: from hippies to pacifists, from European intellectuals to eco-activists. Hesse's life is as fascinating as the novels he writes. From a happy childhood to suicide attempts and treatment in a clinic for the mentally ill in his youth, from early landscape poetry to the filigree novel The Bead Game, Alois Prince leads us through the labyrinths of the writer's biography, bringing us closer to understanding the "reclusive eccentric" Hermann Hesse page by page.