The Glass Bead Game cover art

The Glass Bead Game

 Preview
Free with 30-day trial
A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook free.
1 credit/month after trial—to buy any title you like, yours to keep.
Listen all you want to a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.

The Glass Bead Game

By: Hermann Hesse
Narrated by: David Colacci
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $29.99

Buy Now for $29.99

About this listen

 Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, which has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish.

Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

©1990 Hermann Hesse (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Game
All stars
Most relevant  
I read in sequence - something for pure entertainment followed by something that might expand my horizons. This time about it was the latter and I chose The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, a German writer who I had encountered many years before with Siddhartha, an account of a man seeking spiritual enlightenment during the time of the Buddha. The book possessed me, thrilled me and I always meant to read more Hesse but didn't until I came across The Glass Bead Game at a stall at the Cambridge Trash and Treasure market this winter gone. I looked it up on my phone and it said 'speculative fiction'. I like this genre so purchased it and recently settled in to read it.

It's an epic and episodic account of one man's journey through time (reincarnation) as he seeks to fulfil his inclinations. The novel explores eastern and western esoteric philosophy, rational intellectualism, all shades of human nature while addressing the rise of fascism in Europe (it was written between 1931 and 1942). On this last note Hesse offers some especially potent insights into the phenomenon that drives mass hysteria. Perhaps the best of which describes Trump. Basically: when people are confused they will mostly always choose the easy charms of the snake oil peddler over solutions with a more rational bent. Of course he explains why but there is no need for me to get any deeper into that here.

Not the easiest book but I endured and am glad I did, I felt especially fulfilled by the experience, which probed at my psyche and asked me again and again to examine myself: my inclinations, faults and strengths.The Glass Bead Game provokes the reader to examine our individual 'truth' and to be honest about that examination.

Perhaps the best way I can describe The Glass Bead Game is to say it is a compendium of esoteric wisdom aka The Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao Te Ching and their western equivalents, restructured for a 'modern'; audience. A novel that explores the art and value of emotional, intellectual and spiritual transformation and how to apply it in meaningful way, The Glass Bead Game is magnificent, bold, prescient, sagacious.......a genuine masterwork.

Upon completion I could not help but think of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, another episodic and epic account of an individuals journey through time in search of meaning and fulfilment. This is one of my all-time favourite novels and the two books share enough to make me wonder if The Glass Bead Game inspired Mitchell?

Perspective Broadening Fiction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
why does Hesse discourage his readers with frigid, laborious biography? the dessert is worth it

a hard trek up a mountain, but what a view

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.