Херман Хесе

If the War Goes On: Reflections on War and Politics is a series of essays and other writings by the German-born Swiss author Hermann Hesse. It covers the period 1914 to 1948. Much of the book is critical of war and the German war effort, yet contains multifaceted accounts of various Germans who resisted war.

The Glass Bead Game, for which Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, is the author’s last and crowning achievement, the most imaginative and prophetic of all his novels. Setting the story in the distant postapocalyptic future, Hesse tells of an elite cult of intellectuals who play an elaborate game that …