In the spring of 1922, several months after completing
Siddhartha
, Hermann Hesse wrote a fairy tale that was also a love story, inspired by the woman who was to become his second wife. That story,
Pictor's Metamorphoses
, is the centerpiece of this anthology of Hesse's luminous short fiction. Based on
The Arabian Nights
and the work of the Brothers Grimm, the nineteen stories collected here represent a half century of Hesse's short writings. They display the full range of Hesse's lifetime fascination with fantasy—as dream, fairy tale, satire, or allegory.