Only a few German writers of the twentieth century have enjoyed worldwide acclaim. Undisputably numbered among these are Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, and Hermann Hesse. Hesse's major works have been translated into some thirty-five languages. Of all foreign countries, the United States, followed closely by Japan, has been most taken with Hesse. The 15 million or so books that had been published in the United States by 1987 equaled the number that had been sold in Germany, and exceeded 14 million or more that readers had bought in Japan. Only Romain Rolland has attracted more attention in Japan than Hesse. In the West, Hesse has, since the 1950s, enjoyed his most widespread popularity in the English- and Spanish-speaking countries.

Hesse's father, Johannes Hesse, was born in Weissenstein, Estonia; his mother, Marie, daughter of the missionary and Indologist Hermann Gundert, was born in Talatscheri, India. Both branches of the family...