A great masterpiece - Rated 
I agree with the other reviewers, a masterpiece. A book to grip you, make you think, make you breathe deep, make you cry, laugh, feel the pain and ecstacy of Narziss and Golmund. A book of the Middle Ages but of all time also. Thrilling and violent and yet gentle.......
If there were 50 stars I'd give it that!
Totally superb - Rated
Although I have to confess that Hesse is my favourite author, this is my absolute favourite book ever. Hesse is an absolute master writer and his tales can often live in your head for a long while after you close the covers; while they are open, each line captures you. This book is, in my opinion, one of his very best and a brilliant view into aspects of the pale psyche too.
In all, most highly recommended!
unexpected joy - Rated
As with the other comment on this book, this is also the first Hesse i've read, but surely not the last. Really impressed, if i had read a page at random in Whsmith's i think might have put it back down, as a times it reads like a fairytale and you do need to suspend everything you know about the modern age to fully get into the spirit of the book,
but then when you do that, you find a resonance in everything that happens to our trusted wayfarer, Goldmund, and you start to scratch beneath the surface of Hesse's story, and its sentiment keeps unfolding before you on the page. Then you're at the end, and you need to go back and check for what you missed.
And Graham Coxon's introduction is really sweet as well.
Fantastic - Rated
I'll begin by saying that I haven't read any other of Hesse's books. After reading Narcissus and Goldmund, I can hardly wait. However, I find it hard to imagine how anything he has written could possibly surpass the singing, joyously spiritual prose that lies on every page of this effort. A book that positively resounds with the twin elements of ecstasy and grief, of life and death, of light and dark, it is the ultimate tribute to life and all its incredible avenues. Sprawling yet succinct, philosophical yet free spirited, it is, in two words, life affirming.
It is unusual for such a modestly sized book to tackle such large, important themes so effectively, and so excitingly. In Goldmund, we can all see ourselves, or can all see what we might be, if we had the gumption. He is one the best illustrated characters, best illustrated concepts, to ever grace our pages. His artistic and amorous wanderings are delightfully redolent of the very joy of being. A primitive, soulful vagabond, blessed with an artist's mind, and cursed with an artist's depression, he wheels through life, from woman to woman, from valley to valley, from light to dark. Narcissus, his mentor and the thinker, bookends the book in a pleasingly structural manner, his brooding intellectualism, and peaceful scholarly outlook providing the perfectly balanced contrast, to impetuous, free-spirited Goldmund.
A veritable mine of inspiration awaits the sensitive reader, in what is surely Hesse's crowning achievement. To read the poetic, fable-like prose is to gain insight like no other, to be inspired time and time again, to be uplifted and to be guided. It is a book to which doubtless you will return.
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