''Klingsor's Last Summer'' is a

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...

. Written over the course of a few weeks in July and August 1919, it was published in December 1919 in the '' Neue Rundschau''. It was later published (by S. Fischer Verlag) in a volume which included ''Kinderseele'' and ''Klein und Wagner''.

Plot

The story is an account of the final months of the life of Klingsor, a forty-two-year-old expressionist painter. A lover of poetry, a heavy drinker, and a womanizer, he spends his final summer in southern Switzerland, torn between sensuality and spirituality and troubled by feelings of impending death.

Character list

*Klingsor *Louis the cruel *Ersilia *The Queen of the mountains *The Armenian astrologer *Edith 1919 German-language novels Novels by Hermann Hesse Künstlerroman Novels about artists Novels set in Switzerland 1919 German novels German bildungsromans S. Fischer Verlag books {{1910s-bildungsroman-stub