Fairy Tales

A new translation of the original German manuscript of Nobel Prize-winning Hermann Hesse's novel "Fairy Tales". This edition also contains an epilogue by the translator, a philosophical glossary of concepts used by Hesse and a chronology of his life and work. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947.

Hesse's "Fairy Tales" (Märchen in German) was first published in Berlin in 1919. It is significant for offering a more mythical and fantastical expression of Hesse's philosophical ideas. The tales reflect Hesse's own lifelong interest in Eastern thought and spiritual exploration. Hessededicated a fairy tale to each of his three wives: to his first wife, Mia, the fairy tale Iris (1916); to Ruth Wenger, Pictor's Metamorphoses (1922); and, shortly after his marriage to Ninon Dolbin in March 1933, his last and very autobiographical fairy tale, Vogel.