I liked that book when I was young but a recent reading didn't leave me super impressed.

My absolute favorite book by Hesse is Narcissus and Goldmund, it's beautiful. The Glass Bead game is pretty amazing too.

I can’t. Dostoyevski’s Russia is still very much European. It’s culturally a lot closer to what was produced in my own Western European country at the time than anything written in the USA at the same period. But the very idea of the western civilisation is dubious anyway.