Forty years ago, Hermann Hesse was everywhere. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, translated into 60 languages, his timeless stories were popular all around the world. And then he disappeared. I read him avidly in my teens and then forgot all about him, but now I’m in my late fifties I find myself rereading him with the same old adolescent fervour. How come?
I must admit it was mere coincidence which brought me back to Hesse. On a recent train journey through Switzerland,
