Germanophone literature

Crisis

by Hermann Hesse

This collection of poems, written during the same period as Steppenwolf, was first published in 1928 in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.  Hesse's uneasiness about the degree of self-exposure in these quite...

On the Edge

by Markus Werner & Robert E. Goodwin

A psychological drama with a masterful, pulse-quickening plot revolving around two seemingly very different men, who have more in common than they know.

Thomas Clarin is a divorce lawyer whose profession...

Stories of Five Decades

by Hermann Hesse

This selection of twenty-three stories (twenty available in English for the first time) offers a spectrum of Hesse's writing from 1899 to 1948 that could be matched only by an edition of his poetry, since in...

Rosshalde

by Hermann Hesse

Rosshalde is the classic story of a man torn between obligations to his family and his longing for a spiritual fulfillment that can only be found outside the confines of conventional society.

Johann Veraguth,...

Pictor's Metamorphoses

by Hermann Hesse

In the spring of 1922, several months after completing Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse wrote a fairy tale that was also a love story, inspired by the woman who was to become his second wife. That story, Pictor’s...

Peter Camenzind

by Hermann Hesse

Peter Camenzind, a young man from a Swiss mountain village, leaves his home and eagerly takes to the road in search of new experience. Traveling through Italy and France, Camenzind is increasingly disillusioned...

Knulp

by Hermann Hesse

First published in 1915, Knulp was Hesse's most popular book in the years before Demian. This is the first edition in English. Knulp is an amiable vagabond who wanders from town to town, staying with friends...

The Journey to the East

by Hermann Hesse

In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul...

Narcissus and Goldmund

by Hermann Hesse

Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of a passionate yet uneasy friendship between two men of opposite character. Narcissus, an ascetic instructor at a cloister school, has devoted himself solely to scholarly...

Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the...

Beneath the Wheel

by Hermann Hesse

Hans Giebernath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious...

Demian

by Hermann Hesse

A brilliant journey of the psyche written by one of Germany’s most influential writers and thinkers, Herman Hesse

First published in 1919 under the pseudonyn Emil Sinclair, Demian follows the life of a troubled...

Wittgenstein's Nephew: A Novel

by Thomas Bernhard

It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig...

Gertrude

by Hermann Hesse

With Gertrude, Herman Hesse continues his lifelong exploration of the irreconcilable elements of human existence. In this fictional memoir, the renowned composer Kuhn recounts his tangled relationships with...

Twilight and Moonbeam Alley

by Stefan Zweig & Anthea Bell

In ‘Twilight’, a fashionable lady is banished from Versailles by the King, and tries to make the best of life on her country estate. Versailles, for all its hollowness, was the only thing that gave her existence...

Life Goes On

by Hans Keilson & Damion Searls

Published when the author was just twenty-three, Life Goes On was Hans Keilson’s literary debut, an extraordinary autobiographical novel that paints a dark yet illuminating portrait of Germany between the...

Amerika

by Franz Kafka

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

Foreword by E. L. Doctorow

Afterword by Max Brod

Kafka’s first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing...

The Inheritance

by Peter Stephan Jungk & Michael Hofmann

Daniel Loew, a poet based in London, has been told since childhood that one day he will become his wealthy uncle's only heir. When he learns of his uncle's death, in Caracas, a few weeks have since passed. A...

The Russian Passenger

by Gunter Ohnemus & John Brownjohn

A Russian mafia thriller, a road-movie adventure and an elegantly written love story.

We're Flying

by Peter Stamm & Michael Hofmann

Following the publication of the widely acclaimed novel Seven Years comes a trove of stories from the Swiss master Peter Stamm. They all possess the traits that have built Stamm’s reputation: the directness...