Penguin Essentials: Steppenwolf

Review The gripping and fascinating story of disease in a man's soul, and a savage indictment of bourgeois society ― New York Times Existential masterpiece ― The Times A profoundly memorable and affecting novel ― New York Times Product Description 'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.' Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything. From the Back Cover 'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.' Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything. About the Author HERMANN HESSE was born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. As a child, he lived for a time in Basle. 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, his 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.