Thomas Wayne is an English Professor at Florida SouthWestern State College in Fort Myers. He has published several poetic translations with Algora, including classics by Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse and Goethe.

His approach in translating the Middle English Sir Gawain and the iconoclastic German powerhouses is to return the juice the authors originally intended, with all their dynamic energy. In his hands, poetry is elegant and hard-hitting, not dainty and dull.

The author, Hermann Hesse, a poet and novelist, is known for his stark explorations of the individual's spiritual search and the striving for a life of virtue, justice and understanding within the restrictions of society. Several of Hesse's novels are centered on the protagonist's journey into the inner self, with a spiritual guide who assists the hero in his quest for self-knowledge and shows the way beyond the world "deluded by money, number and time." He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Hesse was born in the German state of Württemberg. His father was born a Russian citizen in Weissenstein, Estonia; his mother spent her early years in Talatscheri, India. Both parents served as missionaries in India, and these diverse cultural currents infuse his writing with unusual flavor. 

This bildungsroman, a classic of German literature, is about the development of the individual and the choices that one faces in this journey to selfhood.

The work is autobiographical, originally published in 1919 under the...

This bildungsroman, a classic of German literature, is about the development of the individual and the choices that one faces in this journey to selfhood.

The work is autobiographical, originally published in 1919 under the pseudonym of its protagonist and narrator, Emil Sinclair. “Sinclair� tells the story of his fascination with his boyhood friend and idol, Max Demain, who is himself a representative of the ideas and ideals suggested by Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche ? Hesse’s literary forebears.

In this work Hesse succeeded for the first time in bringing together in a coherent fashion his main concerns and beliefs.