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Steppenwolf: A Novel Paperback – December 1, 2002

by Hermann Hesse (Author), Basil Creighton (Translator)
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With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse's best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature's most poetic evocations of the soul's journey to liberation

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater―For Madmen Only!

Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf 's wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature.

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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Picador
  4. Publication date
    December 1, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    5.45 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0312278675
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0312278670
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hesse is a writer of suggestion, of nuance, of spiritual intimation."―The Christian Science Monitor

"For all its savagely articulate descriptions of torment and isolation, it is most eloquent about something less glamorous but far more important: healing."―The Guardian

About the Author

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German poet and novelist. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. He was the author of numerous works including Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (December 1, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312278675
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312278670
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse

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Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was born in Germany and later became a citizen of Switzerland. As a Western man profoundly affected by the mysticism of Eastern thought, he wrote many novels, stories, and essays that bear a vital spiritual force that has captured the imagination and loyalty of many generations of readers. In 1946, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Glass Bead Game.

Photo by unknown [Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANEFO), 1945-1989 / Public Domain] [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,691 global ratings
Good read
3 Stars
Good read
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, was an interesting read in terms of how we view life as individuals. Harry Haller views life as unforgiving and finds no happiness which makes him feel loneliness. He meets a girl named Hermine, someone that reminds him of a childhood friend. She basically teaches him how to live life, and he meets others people such as Maria and Pablo. I thought the book overall was great and made you think how to live life, and do good things in the little time that we have on earth. But there were a few issues I had while reading this book.1. The format seemed strange to me. The book didn’t have chapter sections like most books do. It felt like I had to keep reading or I would lose my place.2. It took me 2 weeks to finish. I’m usually a fast reader but some of the reading was dense for me, and at times I would be confused on what was going on.3. The book at times felt like it was dragging on even though the book is only 218 pages.Overall, the book was great! I also enjoy some of the quotes I read within the book. My favorite quote is towards the end, “Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One is born and at once one’s guilty.”
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Top reviews from the United States

suefein
5.0 out of 5 stars A wolf of the Steppes is clearly characterized by H Hesse
Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2024
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Harry Haller, is the name of the Wolf of the Steppes. His journey through life is described in amazing detail, considering that I have read a translation. But I can not recommend this book to my granddaughter, a youg-adult. Since she is not ready for the reality that this book describes. Still, it is an amazing book, which I recommend to adults.
3 people found this helpful
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R. Schwartz
5.0 out of 5 stars Harry Haller, Steppenwolf and the Illusion of The Self
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2004
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A 300 page book I read in two days. Interesting story with great self descriptions of a man torn away from society into himself and his two personas, Harry Haller and the Steppenwolf. Harry Haller is the bourgeois self, who is an intellectual, thinker and socially "normal" man and Steppenwolf is the rebel self who rebels from mediocre bourgeois living and is an angry skeptic. He then meets others, including intimacy with women, who also came to the same conclusions of life's emptiness through their personas, although they come from the superficial world of desires and pleasures, which is the majority of society.

The book continues through the struggles of Harry's troubled self personas and encounters he occurs. Ultimately, it is the recognition of the self, the persona(s) that are not anymore as serious and rather humorous. This is because the acknowledgment comes from a new awareness that the self is a construction of many different personas which are all part of a game, and the idea of a game suggests the illusion we carry in the seriousness of the role we play, the persona we emulate. It's an amazing self insight that allows him to perceive his life apart from his self-made, man-made personas that are only creations of the self and societal structures, cultural conditioning and linguistic formations. This of course, includes all philosophies, all political and religious ideologies and recognizes their transient nature adapting to the current societal structure of the time. It is a revelation from the self, an escape from the ego, a release from the illusionary selves that the majority of the world are unaware and who take their personas as "real" and fail to see the multiplicity of the self and that our personas are in reality illusions we create. And this is all realized under the Magic Theater - Entrance Not For Everybody - For Madmen Only! - The Cost, Your Mind. The entry and experience into this theater happens at the end of the novel by drinking a potion and smoking some secret herb rolled up in yellow rolling paper, which can no doubt be psychedelic drugs or similar drugs that enabled Harry to obtain the ability to let go of his illusionary self and open the doors of perception to see the multiplicities of reality and their relative positions.

This insight is also that of the 1960's Harvard University professor, guru, psychologist and author, Timothy Leary, who found the use of LSD and psychedelics enabled him and many others, including intellectuals, professors, theologians, divinity students, historians and eventually much of the public, to also enter higher portions of reality, recognizing their limited egos, beyond their illusionary personas to perceive that the Magic Theater is the theater that reveals the many games we and our society play, the many chess pieces we both consciously and unconsciously create in the chessboards of life and that the majority, the power and control people, reject this adamantly, entirely living for the seriousness of their illusionary personas in rationalism and language as the only true reality, resulting in the dominating others, including that of the governments who start bloody wars and pass laws that curb and even destroy creativity.

Harry Haller - Steppenwolf - experienced a new found wisdom, pages 129 and 131: "I lived through much in Pablo's little (Magic) theater and not a thousandth part can be told in words. . . When I rose once more to the surface of the unending stream of allurement and vice and entanglement, I was calm and silent, I was equipped, far gone in knowledge, wide, expert - ripe for Hermaine (his last love) . . I belong to her not just as this one piece in my game of chess - I belonged to her wholly. I would now lay out the pieces in my game that all was centered in here and led to fulfillment."

What must be recognized is that while life takes on personas and still, unmoving snapshots of reality and interprets them as absolutes, it still can not hide what is behind such still frames of perception; the moving flow of multifaceted reality, the relative nature of perception. But this can only be so if people stop becoming so serious in their chess games, cease being critics, experts and trash their beliefs in absolutes - "Better learn to listen first! Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest." p. 143 The music we hear may be distorted and may not conform to our perceptions, but it can never hide the eternal music of life that exists within it. While many of us have the courage to die for our errors and crimes, we don't have the courage to fully live, anotherwards, we don't know how to to laugh and apprehend the humor of life, to see the relative nature and meanings of the distorted music, and recognize that all of life's perceptions have serious limitations and must not be taken as absolute truths.

Oh, and one more thought. A thought that keeps haunting me is the laughing Haller envisions Mozart as doing, a mad, insane laughter and I sense inside this myself. Life, while beautiful, is truly a painful tragedy, a fightening, suffering existence that deteroriates into death. Without having absolutes to lean on, the human's ability of humor and comedy counter act and balance the psyche. That's the insane, mad, overwhelming laughter. That's the antedote of our awareness to the transient nature of all our relative truths. We see the contradictions, lighten up and laugh, although this laugh comes from the depths of our soul.
29 people found this helpful
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fra7299
4.0 out of 5 stars Deep, ponderous and quite reflective character study
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2023
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“I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; the beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.”

I most likely will not do justice to this book with my review, as this is a novel that is quite complex, with so many layers and levels of meaning to unpack. But, wow, what a strange, enlightening experience and journey reading this novel is! This is definitely a novel that leaves the reader contemplating and reflecting, as it is a very ponderous, deep, and symbolic journey we embark on. We have a literal meaning, but we also have an allegorical meaning. I think that in many ways, this book in its barest and most simplistic way, is about finding oneself and meaning in one’s life, and keeping on in the game of life even in the moments of a severely depressive state. (The novel’s message goes exceptionally deeper than this, though).

Of all the novels, Hesse said of his novel that it was the one that was most often misinterpreted. I read the author’s note in the introduction and Hesse states “This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing.”

Harry Haller, a lonely, reclusive, and depressed individual, leaves behind a manuscript that tells of his existence. Dubbing himself a “Steppenwolf,” he explains that he is a man of two (and sometimes more) natures. Quite a bit of the novel explores the depths of how these two natures, himself and the “beast” within himself, are continually clashing, seemingly forever at odds with each other within Harry’s conscience.

At one point, while in a state of disillusion and with impending thoughts of suicide, Harry happens to see an intriguing and mysterious sign on a door about a “Magic Theater.” He later, in his distress, meets an intriguing woman named Hermine, who opens his eyes to his current state of mind, and helps him shed some of his former self and open himself to a new existence. By parts, she introduces him to the bourgeois lifestyle, teaches him to dance, and in a way, opens up a new world to him.

However, the narrative takes on a mystical, surrealistic, and existential atmosphere and ambience in the latter portions. We readers perhaps question what is real and what is illusion. The culminating section, when Harry enters the Magic Theater, takes on almost a dreamlike, fantastical, psychedelic sequence, and there is quite a bit of symbolism to take in and put together.

Steppenwolf is a very complex, deeply thought-provoking read, which will give a reader plenty to contemplate about. I admit that I am still trying to put all the pieces together. If you are into books with deep psychology or getting into the makeup of a character, the inner workings of their minds, this is definitely a book I would recommend.
9 people found this helpful
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Nicole Lafourcade
5.0 out of 5 stars A tremendous classic exploring a sensitive human soul tormented by the frivolous bourgeois society
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2021
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Self-referent in many ways, Herman Hesse presents us with a character (Harry Haller, i.e., "HH" just like the author) torn by his inability to resolve a conflict between the spiritual nature of man and the animalistic "wolf of the steppes" inherent tendency of all living creatures, but also unwilling to adapt to the frivolous society and rising nationalistic sentiments of the times, with a growing suicidal tendency. Saved, at least temporarily, by a mysterious woman called Hermine (hinting another side of himself), who is able to understand him but also put into question some of his attitudes, and immerse him into the a more sensual world without compromising his spiritual side. The last part of the book, if you manage to surrender yourself completely into it, makes you high without the need to smoke anything.
One person found this helpful
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joe1013
3.0 out of 5 stars Quality is good.
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2024
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The book quality is good. The story was a little dull for my taste and simply did not resonate with me. I will say it does give some vague insight into the thoughts and concerns of an average intellectual in 1920's Germany. ( I think first published in 1927).
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars bit smol
Reviewed in Sweden on July 21, 2021
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smol
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Anirban Nayek
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice binding and Handy size
Reviewed in Germany on June 6, 2021
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Nice binding and Handy size
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RYAN FIENNES
5.0 out of 5 stars Picador Modern Classic edition
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2021
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I purchased the Picador Modern Classic edition; and am very pleased with it.
These editions are compact hardback books - smaller than the average paperback. The print may be too small for some, but I haven't struggled with reading it; and due to the size of these editions, they are easy to carry and read anywhere.
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Andre P.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente obra e edição
Reviewed in Brazil on November 21, 2019
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A edição é de bolso em capa dura, contem boas páginas e datilografia. Infelizmente não encontrei o mesmo tipo de edição para outras obras do autor. A obra em si é genial, mas provavelmente não é para todos os públicos.
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Daffy Bibliophile
5.0 out of 5 stars Learning To Laugh At Life
Reviewed in Canada on August 21, 2012
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Hesse was fifty when he wrote this book and to me that's the key. The main character, Harry Haller is approaching fifty and is going through a crisis in his life, hence this is not the stuff for college kids to read as they apparently did back in the 1960s. How could a twenty-five year old possibly understand the problems of a fifty year old???

Harry was, in my opinion, suffering from depression; in the author's note written in 1961, Hesse states that this is a story of "a disease and crisis" and ultimately a healing. Harry Haller did not feel that he fit in with society, he felt contempt for life and for bourgeois society, for the modern world. His safety valve was his razor, the knowledge that he could commit suicide whenever he wanted. Bring it on life! The emergency door is always open!

What happened next is open to debate. How much of what Harry experiences after meeting Hermine (was she real?) and Maria and Pablo - how much of all that was real to Harry? I have no idea. Reading this book was a wonderful experience despite the ups and downs, but I don't claim to fully understand it. Kinda like life, I guess.
6 people found this helpful
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