#the narrator is also UNRELIABLE 🔥🔥🔥🔥 or maybe he doesn't even know it himself

[aroacehanzawa]

Top 3 (or 5 or 10, this is a difficult choice) fave Hermann Hesse works? 👀

Ohhhh good question

I have read 5 of his books so i will rank all 5 👍

Beneath the Wheel

Demian

Journey to the East

Narcissus and Goldmund

Siddhartha

#i finished journey to the east and i went into it completely blind and #it's a short one but when i finished it i had to rotate the whole thing in my head until i fell asleep #first of all the blend of reality and fantasy as well as past and present is really fascinating and kind of trippy #and it's not just a blend of time but also of places and settings. and then it will randomly drop you back into early 20th century germany #in a very jarring way like it all feels like some kind of fever dream #the narrator is also UNRELIABLE 🔥🔥🔥🔥 or maybe he doesn't even know it himself #but the reveal at the end really recontextualises everything in an interesting way #and the very ending was also really thought provoking to me #and underneath it all i felt like the core message of the book was how you have to put active effort into finding joy and wonder in life #and how easily you can become disillusioned and also how easily it is to feel like everyone else abandons you if you're actually the one #who gets disillusioned and distances yourself from others #and then at the very end you get a very meta treat on what it means to be a creator and creation. or perhaps #(puts orv goggles on) the relationship between and the nature of writer and protagonist #hesseposting