The Glass Bead Game is the last full-length novel of the German author
Hermann Hesse. It was begun in 1931 and published in
Switzerland in 1943 after being rejected for publication in Germany due to Hesse's anti-Fascist views. A few years later, in 1946, Hesse went on to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature. In honoring him in its Award Ceremony Speech, the
Swedish Academy said that the novel "occupies a special position" in Hesse's work.