Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth

By Hermann Hesse
Foreword by James Franco
Introduction by Ralph Freedman
Translated by Damion Searls

“Demian became . . . a voice I could listen to and contemplate as I tried to find my way from childhood to adulthood and into the world of art.” —James Franco, from the Foreword

“[An] excellent new translation.” —The Times Literary Supplement

A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment. A brilliant psychological portrait, Demian is given new life in this translation, which together with James Franco’s personal and inspiring foreword will bring a new generation to Hesse’s widely influential coming-of-age novel.

Paperback
176 pages
Penguin Classics, 2013
Orginally published in 1919
5 x 7.75 0.45 inches
ISBN 9780143106784
Psychological Fiction