Steppenwolf - (Vintage Classics) by Hermann Hesse (Paperback)

About the Book

"The quest for self-discovery never ends, especially for Harry Haller, better known as the Steppenwolf. After a life spent in self-imposed isolation, Harry meets the mysterious Hermine and becomes captivated by her intoxicating power. Through their nighttime adventures, the Steppenwolf experiences the decadent underbelly of the bourgeois society he always despised. Harry becomes a man divided, lost in a surreal underground world of pleasure and set on a collision course with his innermost desires"--

Book Synopsis

The counterculture classic, a surrealist masterpiece about a man who believes his life is irredeemable until he ventures into the world of pleasure, by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Siddhartha.

To the outside world, Harry Haller is a reserved intellectual: quietly renting an upstairs room from a respectable family, he spends his days alone in miserable contemplation. But on the inside, Harry is the Steppenwolf, half man and half wolf, trapped between a disdain for the regulated lives of respectable people and an inability to embrace the pleasures of the senses.

As he begins to confront the life he's spent in self-imposed isolation, Harry meets the mysterious Hermine and becomes captivated by her ease of moving through the world. Hermine becomes Harry's guide through the decadent underbelly of their city, and his teacher in the ways of the pleasure-seeking bourgeois society he's always despised. Through a series of surreal encounters with the likes of Mozart and Goethe, Harry begins to find that the world of desire is the key to unlocking the life he once thought irredeemable.

About the Author

Hermann Hesse (1877­-1962) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His many books include Demian, Siddhartha, and Narcissus and Goldmund.