There’s a really nice and kind and generous introduction to this novel written by Thomas Mann that really sets up the context the two writers found themselves in in their pre-WWII context and then in the immediate aftermath. Two German-language writers (both born in various German pre-states around the time of unification) who rejected Nazism, were exiled, and dealt with the remaining conflicting feelings afterward.
This fits the novel itself, about a young man who feels out of sync with the moral order of the world (European, Christian) and finds the schema of moral and political explanation of the state of things to be lacking. He begins as the victim of bully, and with the help of a slightly older classmate (Max Demian) he’s able to get himself out from under this bully’s thumb. This series of events sets him on a spiritual path that involves both nadirs and apexes. He finds himself chasing after certain metaphysical images and forms he keeps finding glimpses of — specifically a sparrowhawk and an Asia Minor mystic icon named Abraxas. This leads him into a kind gnostic cult lead by a goddess-head figure of Lady Eva, Demian’s mother.
This relationship predicts a new world order that will be formed as a kind of descriptive and pluralistic understanding of the world, overthrow the shackles of industrialization and captialism, and find some kind of spiritual kingdom of man on Earth.
It’s a trippy book and reminds me a lot of nearly every single Haruki Murakami I’ve ever read, the same way that you can pick a few Velvet Underground or Led Zeppelin and find the entire discography of later bands within them.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Demian-Story-Youth-Hermann-Hesse/dp/1614270260/ref=sr_1_2?crid=27034ABV7PJW7&keywords=demian+hermann+hesse&qid=1558880048&s=books&sprefix=demian%2Cstripbooks%2C148&sr=1-2)