Hermann Hesse is known as a brilliant storyteller, a true intellectual and an observant psychologist, whose unusual novel plots are striking from the very first pages. The collection opens with a landmark work by the writer, which had a huge impact on all his further work, "Demian", which the great Thomas Mann compared to "The Sufferings of young Werther". This is the story of growing up and becoming a young man who, step by step, moves further away from the hypocritical norms of public morality and discovers more and more clearly the deep, dark self — free, beyond the control of the virtuous pharisaism that reigns around. In this, he is helped by his mysterious friend Demian, the bearer of the "seal of Cain", either the devil, or a mysterious deity, or just a product of the hero's imagination.…The novels "The Soul of a Child", "Klein and Wagner", "The Last Summer of Klingsor" were first published in a single collection during the writer's lifetime and have been published together ever since. The secret of the unobvious internal connection between them is actually simple: the characters in all three of Hesse's novels are people who are experiencing a radical breakdown and reassessment of their own value system. Narcissus and Chrysostom is a philosophical novel that is considered to be key to Hesse's creative development. Stylized as an adventurous novel of the late Middle Ages, the story of two brilliant novice friends from a secluded German monastery who go to spiritual enlightenment and perfection in art in various ways ... The collection also includes the famous autobiographical essays "The Journey", "The Spa Man" and "Trip to Nuremberg".