Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

Perhaps one of the most original novels of contemporary literature, Steppenwolf follows the midlife escapades of Harry Haller, a self-proclaimed loner and sedentary intellectual, showing his spiritual collapse and ventures into the vast, unfamiliar world of hedonistic physical pleasure and human interaction. The experimental structure includes a good-sized treatise on the nature of the so-called Steppenwolf (Harry's identity of part man, part lone, wandering, savage beast), and an introduction to the prismatic, fluctuating concept of self and personality found in Eastern philosophy. Hesse conjures up both Goethe and Mozart to take part in Harry's circus-like crisis, and allows other characters to test and push the limits of his understanding (including a criticism of the over-intellectualization of music from a Latino jazz man). This novel, while self-reflexive, fantastical, masculine, personal and German, does not instruct with ideology - it is full of intentional contradictions and alternatives that allow the reader to contemplate the myriad possibilities of life and human experience. I can only imagine its reception in the rising flood of socialist dogma back when it was first published in 1920s Germany.

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4 out of 5
Buy this book: Steppenwolf: A Novel