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Book Description
Hermann Hesse's magnum opus and a twentieth-century classic
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, science, and art. Intrigued as a school boy, Joseph Knecht becomes consumed with mastering the game as an adult. As Knecht fulfils his life-long quest he must contend with unexpected dilemmas and the longing for a life beyond the ivory tower.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
82 of 84 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Glass Bead Game is set in Castalia, an intellectual utopia of the future, where scholars, having cut themselves off from the rest of the world, are free to immerse themselves in the unadulterated pursuit of knowledge.
The Glass Bead Game itself is the embodiment of this community's ideology. It is a game in which contestants attempt to establish patterns of commonality between seemingly disparate intellectual fields. Although the emphasis within the novel is that it is an essentially aesthetic pursuit, it is a fascinating idea that is increasing relevant in modern science with physicist search for the 'theory of everything' and the application of chaos theory to increasing number of apparently unrelated systems.
Although Herman Hesse was something of a sixties icon, and despite its frequent reference to Eastern mysticism, to my mind the sentiments of this book are decidedly anti-hippie. The author is warning us that any community that doggedly pursues it ideology at the expense of the world at large is at risk of becoming stagnant, inward looking, and ultimately decadent and irrelevant. It is a call to pragmatism, as valuable today as it has ever been.
After reading Steppenwolf, which I found a turgid and difficult read, I came to this novel with some trepidation. However, despite it's philosophical overtones and being written in the style of a biography, The Glass Bead Game is far from a struggle to read and you quickly find yourself being drawn into the life of the protagonist. Consummately written, the Glass Bead Game is a fascinating and thought provoking book which will stay with you long after you've put it down for the last time.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
More complex than his earlier books. Read 'Narziss & Goldmund' first, where similar themes are developed as separate characters, and this will make much more sense. The other main books: 'Damian', 'Steppenwolf', 'Siddartha', explore/describe singular ways of living rather than the deep personal conflict here - read them before or after, as you like. This is the greatest novel about the pursuit of the aesthetic life, its rewards and cost, ever written - I think.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The Glass Bead Game should be required reading for anyone interested in the price of pursuing a "life of the mind." Bringing together all of the aspects of the aesthetic life in the growth of the main character (Knecht), the book asks the central question: shall one give up living in the world as a result? The demands of chasing wisdom while addressing the needs of day to day living pre-occupied Hesse throughout his literary life. This predominant theme of his work reaches its culmination in The Glass Bead Game. It is a novel of exrtaordinary beauty and life...few pieces have ever reached deeper into the wellsprings of what it means to be "alive in two worlds."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Deep and very rewarding
I read this after a recommendation from http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/09/glass-bead-game.html. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. Adrian I. Skilling
World's most boring book
I approached this book with a huge wave of enthusiasm, expecting Thomas Mann meets sci-fi. Sadly there is neither in this novel. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Steve Morris
Transcendental
I am very happy to read some reviews that capture (what I think is) the essence of this book.
There are moments of such transcendental, meditative beauty in this jewel of a... Read more
There are moments of such transcendental, meditative beauty in this jewel of a... Read more
Published 5 months ago by VonMises
Tower of glass, beads of doubt
The Glass Bead Game is set in an indeterminate future, a long time after the century of wars, also described as the age of the feuilleton, a time of shallow and fruitless... Read more
Published 8 months ago by reader 451
Humility best presented in a novel
As a cheeky teenager this masterpiece was the coolest SF/fantasy and a surprising loot from the school library in Japan (it was a Japanese edition immaculately translated from the... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Chili Beans
Teaches how to pay attention to the life of the mind
Like nothing I've ever read before. The presumably fictional but utterly convincing biography of Joseph Knecht, the man who in the 23rd Century becomes Magister Ludi (Master of... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Jo Bennie
The past is another country
Hesse's novel won the Nobel Prize and joins the ranks of strangely overrated works that are now not much read but hit the right spot at the time. Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2009 by Dr. G. Hyde
A fascinating mass of contradictions
I first read 'The Glass Bead Game' in my late teens, and it left a lasting if vague impression. I very very rarely reread books - being of the opinion that life is just too short -... Read more
Published on 11 May 2009 by EmmaH
Glass bead Game book
if you are into ...sci fi...gaming... or just thinking then this is the book for you....:-)
Published on 4 Feb 2009 by L. B. savy
Not the masterpiece it wishes to be...
It was an easy read, but quite thin on the ground in terms of depth - the conclusion of the book is so painstakingly obvious it's hard to envisage a whole novel just to prove it. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2009 by Simon Kwong
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