The author, Hermann Hesse, is a poet and novelist known for his stark explorations of the individual's spiritual search and the striving for a life of virtue, justice and understanding within the restrictions of society. Several of Hesse's novels are centered on the protagonist's journey into the inner self, with a spiritual guide assists the hero in his quest for self-knowledge and shows the way beyond the world "deluded by money, number and time." He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.
Hesse was born in the German state of Württemberg. His father was born a Russian citizen in Weissenstein, Estonia; his mother spent her early years in Talatscheri, India. Both parents served as missionaries in India, and these diverse cultural currents infuse his writing with unusual flavor.
The translator Thomas Wayne is an English Professor at Edison College in Fort Myers, Florida. He has published two translations of Nietzsche's classics with Algora Publishing, as well as Hesse's much loved Steppenwolf. His approach in translating these iconoclastic German powerhouses is to return the juice the authors originally intended, the verve and dynamic energy. Basil Creighton's 1929 version (revised in 1963 by Joseph Mileck) is the best-known version in English; it skips words, smoothes out long, involved passages, unnecessarily "improves" the text - all things Thomas Wayne refuses to do. As with his already published translations of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Ecce Homo, and The Antichrist, he emphasizes a strict adherence and reverence for the literal - a Hesse for the 21st century, meaningful and faithful to the original.
