Reader's Choice

For its simplicity and spirituality, Knulp, by Hermann Hesse (HarperCollins, £4.99 in UK), is a book to which one will often return. Knulp is a vagrant but he has many friends in many towns; he whistles, sings, and reads poetry. He is fortyish and dying of consumption, but something draws him back to his old village. But nothing is the same. In his youth he gave up a promising scholarly career for a girl, who then was unfaithful, and this changed the course of his life. He curses his fate, but God appears and convinces him that it had been the whole purpose of Knulp's life to bring a little nostalgia for freedom into the lives of others, to make the children laugh and people dance.