Der Steppenwolf
1927
- fiction
- life
- western civilization
- psychological fiction
- continental european fiction (fictional works by one author)
- german fiction
- western civilization in fiction
- translations into russian
- life in fiction
- ficción
The story
A story that focuses on the loneliness and suffering of the protagonist, Harry Haller, who feels that he has no place in a world filled with meaningless frivolity. Having decided to take his own life a chance encounter causes him to change his views and he begins to learn ways to enjoy life. One of the most misunderstood of his novels the book is, according to Hesse, about the possibilities of transcendence and healing.
What it’s like
Cool, measured prose with a restless, interior voice: long passages of self-scrutiny, a dry ironic wit that slips into fevered visions, and a Weimar-era Germany rendered through cafés, rented rooms, and smoky nights rather than through physical landscape. The mood is melancholy and cerebral, with bursts of surreal, jazz-age colour in the later "Magic Theatre" passages, all glittering mirrors, dance-hall noise, and disorienting shifts in perspective. The pacing is uneven by design, moving from dense, brooding reflection into sudden hallucinatory set pieces, and the emotional register swings between bleak self-pity and wry, tender humour. Its central figure, a solitary, middle-aged intellectual, slowly learns to loosen his grip on despair and to take pleasure in the absurd, playful side of living. Intensity is low on physical violence and gore, though there is a grim, suicidal opening and some sexual content that is frank and dreamlike rather than explicit. Best suited to readers who enjoy introspective, philosophical fiction on a rainy afternoon or late at night, and to those drawn to the strange, theatrical side of modernism.
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