Tales of Wonder, Hermann Hesse, Jeanne-Marie Gaillard-Paquet

Here, providential heroes overcome evil sovereigns, poor wretches discover utopian lands, and vagabonds turn mud into gold: in the pure tradition of the genre, these Wonderful Tales give pride of place to dreams and imagination — which Hermann Hesse himself said “are nothing but forms of love.”

The great writer's first tale, published in this collection, was written when he was ten years old. Throughout his life, which he dedicated primarily to his novels, he never ceased to give body and substance to the archetypal creatures of children's tales, revisiting them with all the power of his own imagination.

This collection offers a selection of fifteen tales, the last of which dates from 1953.