One of his masterpieces . . . without doubt a great novel GuardianOne of Hermann Hesses greatest novels Narcissus and Goldmund is an extraordinary recreation of the Middle Ages contrasting the careers of two friends one of whom shuns life in a monastery and goes on the road tangled in the extremes of life in a world dominated by sin plague and war the other staying in the monastery and struggling with equal difficulty to lead a life of spiritual denial.An superb feat of imagination Narcissus and Goldmund can only be compared to such films set in medieval Europe as Bergmans The Seventh Seal and Tarkovskys Andrei Rublev. It is a gripping profound reading experience as startling in its different way as Hesses Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.