Demian

Demian is a novel by the German-Swiss writer Hermann Hesse, published in 1919. It was first issued under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair, the name of its narrator.

Sinclair divides his childhood in his own mind between the bright world of his parents' house and the other world of the servants' yard, the public house and the stories the boys tell. He falls into the second one by claiming credit for a theft he did not commit, and the boy who holds it over him threatens and extorts him until Max Demian intervenes. Demian is a strange, self-possessed classmate who offers an interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel that turns the accepted reading inside out, and he gives Sinclair a way of thinking that does not need anybody's approval. The novel then follows Sinclair through school, a period of drinking and drifting, and a slow, uneven search for the person he is supposed to be, with Demian and others appearing when he needs them most.

Hesse wrote the book during and just after the First World War, and its argument about following a self that other people have not chosen for you gave it a wide readership. The tenth edition was the first to carry the author's name, under the title Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth.