Steppenwolf

A modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthral 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.

About the Author

Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. After a short period at a seminary he moved to Switzerland to work as a bookseller. From 1904 he devoted himself to writing, establishing his reputation with a series of romantic novels. During the First World War he worked for the Red Cross. His later novels - Siddartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss und Goldmund (1930) and Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game, 1943) - poems and critical essays established him as one of the greatest literary figures of the German-speaking world. He won many literary awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hermann Hesse died in 1962.