Nobel Prize Laureate Author, Poet. He received recognition for being the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Goethe Prize in 1946 and the Peace Prize of German Booksellers in 1955. A six-volume edition of his writings was released in 1952. In 1946, his political essays, "War and Peace," were published. His writings have been translated from German to nearly 60 languages and sold at least 125 million copies world-wide. According to his Nobel Prize biography written in first person, his father was German from Estonia and his mother was French Swiss and from the southern part of Germany. His father was a physician and his parents had been missionaries in India, hence he became familiar with different nationalities and languages. He knew that he wanted to be a poet at an early age. He was educated in boarding school and for a short time in seminaries, leaving early to become a mechanic apprentice. He admits that he had behavioral problems in school stating the priests were trying to change his personality, which led to disappointing his father. Later, he found employment in book and antique shops. His first work was published in 1899 and he became a freelance writer in 1904. His successful first novel, "Peter Camezino," had a plot about a failed and dissipated author. This novel followed with two about artists, "Gertrud" in 1910 and "Rosshalde" in 1914.After his visit to India in 1911, he gained an interest in studies of Eastern religions and in 1922 he published the novel "Siddhartha." With the increased interest in Eastern religions, this book became a favorite during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and remains a staple reading for this reason. After World War I, he published "Demian" in 1919, which was a self-examination of a troubled teenager. His next novel "Steppenwolf" was published in 1927, followed by "Narcissus and Goldmund" in 1931. In 1931 he started to work on his masterpiece "Das Glasperlenspiel" which was published in 1943. With the setting in the 23rd century, this work was his longest novel and published with English titles "The Glass Bead Games" and "Magister Ludi." His other works include "In Sight of Chaos," a collection of essays, "Poems," and "The Journey to the East." After receiving the Nobel Prize late in his career, he wrote no major works. Today, he is still one of the best-selling German writers throughout the world. He died of a heart attack and was married four times. Gunnar Decker's 800+-page biography, "Hesse: The Wanderer and His Shadow" gives details of this writer's life.