A modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthrall readers with its subtle blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf is revised by Walter Sorell from the original translation by Basil Creighton.
At first sight, Harry Haller seems a respectable, educated man. In reality, he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society, and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters — accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe, and the bewitching Hermione — the misanthropic Haller discovers a higher truth and the possibility of happiness.
This blistering portrayal of a man who feels himself to be half-human and half-wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation, and remains a haunting story of estrangement and redemption.
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) suffered from depression and weathered a series of personal crises which led him to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang, a process which resulted in Demian (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience.
This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse's subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), and his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game (1943). Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.
If you enjoyed Steppenwolf, you might like Hesse's Siddhartha, also available in Penguin Classics.
“A savage indictment of bourgeois society ... the gripping and fascinating story of disease in a man's soul.”
— The New York Times
About the Author
HERMANN HESSE was born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. As a child, he lived for a time in Basel. He spent a short period studying at a seminary in Germany but soon left to work as a bookseller in Switzerland. From 1904 he devoted himself to writing.
After a first volume of verse (1899), Hesse established his reputation with a series of lyrical romantic novels — Peter Camenzind (1904), Unterm Rad (The Prodigy, 1906), Gertrud (1910), and the short story Knulp (1915). After a visit to India in 1911, he moved to Switzerland and worked for the Red Cross during the First World War.
He was denounced in Germany and settled permanently in Switzerland, where he established himself as one of the greatest literary figures in the German-speaking world. His humanity and searching philosophy developed further in such novels as Siddhartha (1922), Der Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss and Goldmund (1930), and Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game, 1943), while his poems and critical writings won him a leading place among contemporary thinkers.
Hesse won many literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in 1946. He died in 1962, shortly after his eighty-fifth birthday.
