It’s the birthday of German Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), noted for his novels about the search for authenticity and self-awareness—Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), The Glass Bead Game (1943), and like that—so if you know any angsty adolescents with a literary bent please forward this post and do mention Demian in particular, which features an actual angsty adolescent.

Fun fact: the Canadian-American rock band Steppenwolf named themselves after Hesse’s novel.

Hesse was born in a town that looks like a typo, Calw, located in the Northern Black Forest in Germany; one grandfather had been a missionary, and both parents had done stints in India as missionaries. Hesse was educated in boarding schools in Wuerttemberg and studied briefly at the theological seminary at Maulbronn but didn’t fit in, so he dropped out to apprentice with a mechanic and then worked in a bookstore. He began publishing his poems but no one noticed; his first novel, however, Peter Camenzind (1904), was a success. Hesse married and ditched civilization for the rural life and continued writing. In his next novel, Unterm Rad (1906), he criticized formal education and portrayed a student who self-destructs. (The rule at our house: you’re allowed to drop out of school as long as you publish a brilliant novel about it.)

Hesse continued writing novels and living in the country even as his relationship with an increasingly nationalistic Germany worsened; he moved to Switzerland just before WWI, and in later years never got on well with Hitler, either. (Maybe he didn’t like his native land being headed by a mean-spirited narcissistic bully. Huh.) Hesse did not sit out the war, however: he volunteered for service and cared for prisoners of war. In the meantime, his father died, his marriage failed, and he received a ton of hate mail from more public-spirited Germans. Hesse entered psychoanalysis with a disciple of Jung and produced his novel Demian. In 1923, Hesse officially became a citizen of Switzerland.

Hesse wrote more brilliant novels and in 1946 received the Nobel. His final and longest novel, The Glass Bead Game, is set in the 23rd century and I am offering 20 life points to anyone who’s read it. (Five life points go to my husband for having read Siddhartha.) Hesse died at 85 in Montagnola, Switzerland, and after his death became very popular with young people in the English-speaking world, the sort of people who might, you know, form a Canadian-American rock band.

Have a fine if soggy Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.