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.