In 1919, the same year Demian was published, seven of these stories appeared as a book entitled Märchen--literally, Fairy Tales. For this first edition in English, we have followed the arrangement Hesse made for the final collected edition of his works, where he added an eighth story, "Flute Dream." The new note so clear in Demian was first sounded, Hesse believed, in some of these tales written during the years 1913 to 1918, the period that brought him into conflict with supporters of the war, with his country and its government, with conventional intellectual life, with every form of orthodoxy both in the world and in himself. Unlike his earlier work, from Peter Camenzind through Knulp, the stories in Strange News from Another Star do not allow for an essentially realistic interpretation. They are concerned with dream worlds, the subconscious, magical thinking, and the numinous experience of the soul. Their subject is the distilling of wisdom. The eight stories are "Augustus," "The Poet," "Flute Dream," "Strange News from Another Star," "The Hard Passage," "A Dream Sequence," "Faldum," and--perhaps the masterpiece of this collection--"Iris."

Eight stories about the distillation of wisdom, concerning dream worlds, magical thinking, the subconscious and the soul.

The Nobel Prize winner's 1922 fairy tale about a young man in the garden of paradise is accompanied by eighteen other stories that interweave fantasy, dream, satire, and folktale elements.

A FINALIST FOR THE 2020 WORLD FANTASY AWARD • Unearth the enchanting origins of fantasy fiction with a collection of tales as vast as the tallest tower and as mysterious as the dark depths of the forest. Fantasy stories have always been with us. They illuminate the odd and the uncanny, the wondrous and the fantastic: all the things we know are lurking just out of sight—on the other side of the looking-glass, beyond the music of the impossibly haunting violin, through the twisted trees of the ancient woods. Other worlds, talking animals, fairies, goblins, demons, tricksters, and mystics: these are the elements that populate a rich literary tradition that spans the globe. A work composed both of careful scholarship and fantastic fun, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy is essential reading for anyone who’s never forgotten the stories that first inspired feelings of astonishment and wonder. INCLUDING: *Stories by pillars of the genre like the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, L. Frank Baum, Robert E. Howard, and J. R. R. Tolkien *Fantastical offerings from literary giants including Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Vladimir Nabokov, Hermann Hesse, and W.E.B. Du Bois *Rare treasures from Asian, Eastern European, Scandinavian, and Native American traditions *New translations, including fourteen stories never before in English PLUS: *Beautifully Bizarre Creatures! *Strange New Worlds Just Beyond the Garden Path! *Fairy Folk and Their Dark Mischief! *Seriously Be Careful—Do Not Trust Those Fairies!