Gertrude

Description

With characteristic insight and penetration, Hermann Hesse explores the destructive nature of human love. As a sensitive, disabled young composer, the narrator is drawn to a sensual singer named Gertrude through their mutual love of music. Gradually he becomes engulfed by an enduring and hopeless passion for her but, because of his fear of arousing sympathy instead of passion, he loses her. When Gertrude marries his friend, a famous singer, he is compelled to stand by and watch passively as their obsessive relationship disintegrates into tragedy.

Counted among the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, HERMANN HESSE was born in 1877. Rebelling against a stern monastic education, he worked as a locksmith and a bookseller before embarking on a 65-year writing career. Having travelled as far as India, he settled in Switzerland in 1911 in opposition to German militarism. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946, he died in 1963 aged eighty-five.

'GERTRUDE is very teutonic in its music, its agonies and its solemnity. Yet it would be a pity to miss this book - it has such a rare flavour of truth and simplicity.' - Stevie Smith, OBSERVER 'Brooding teutonic power... the musical detail is extraordinarily well done.' - TLS 'Whether or not one accepts the philosophy implicit in this tale, there is no question of the beauty and artistry of its telling.' - SCOTSMAN