Demian

This book by Herman Hesse came up once on Lex Fridman in the episodes we index. That mention was a genuine on-air recommendation, not just a passing reference. The people who brought it up: Lex Fridman. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment. A brilliant psychological portrait, Demian is given new life in this translation, which together with James Franco’s personal and inspiring foreword will bring a new generation to Hesse’s widely influential coming-of-age novel.