Glassperlenspiel - a Masterpiece by any meaning.
Difficult to read though, not an easy lecture for a sunny Sunday morning. Reading it is worth though... it's all about INITIATION, a fascinating game of becoming.
Very different of everything else Hesse created, a very complex work of a guy who's always fought against the common education. ( )

If Hesse meant this book to lack the warmth and intensity of Siddhartha then he succeeded though he does introduce a subtle counterpoint given that both the main characters of these two novels perform meditation. The crucial point of his intended message would appear to be emphatically driven home in the protagonist's three short stories which appear at the end, especially the first of these. The conclusion was definitely worth the sometimes meandering read to get there. Austere and rarified, without being overly obtuse or dense, it's style reflects the atmosphere in the upper echelons of his intellectual nation. ( )

Fantastic book, read twice in August 1993 and December 2006 and will probably read again some day. Involving, interesting, beautifully written etc etc. ( )

Intense read ( )

Although many people claim this book to be the best of all he wrote (it is supposed to be the book for which he was granted the Novel Prize), the truth is, and in my humble opinion, it is an overrated book.
On one hand, Hesse manages to resume in this book all his career, not only as novelist, but also as a poet an painter. Almost all the different types of literature gathers in this book: there are poems, letters, dialogues, descriptions,...It's, in fact, the result of a highly developped "craftmanship" (and I say craft beacause we could think of this book as beautiful jewel).
On the other, the book lacks the instropection, the emotional point of view of Demian, Sidhartta or "El lobo estepario": the main character is human, but lacks of the emotions of a normal human. It seems more a machine than a man... ( )