The Glass Bead Game

Hermann Hesse’s final and longest novel serves as the epilogue and peak of his entire body of work. Published during the Second World War "despite a repulsive, grinning reality", it addresses his constant theme: the problem of spiritual life in the modern era. The novel depicts a utopian future world where a cultural elite shuts itself away in a scholarly province, cultivating knowledge and culture as a game. However, this game lacks any contact with real life, without which it loses its meaning and without which true spirituality cannot exist.