Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse, David Horrocks (Translator), David Horrocks (Afterword)

Overview

Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s iconic countercultural novel about the search for authenticity in an inauthentic world, in a new translation

A Penguin Classic

At first glance, Harry Haller seems like 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 undergoes a spiritual, even psychedelic, journey, and ultimately discovers a higher truth and the possibility of happiness.

This blistering portrait 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. It continues to resonate as a haunting story of estrangement, redemption, and the search for one’s place in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593511930
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256

About the Author

Hermann Hesse (1877­–1962) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His many books include Demian, Siddhartha, and Narcissus and Goldmund.

David Horrocks (translator) was a lecturer in German at Keele University. He wrote about and taught German modernism and the work of Hermann Hesse and Günter Grass and translated Hesse and Thomas Bernhard.

Editorial Reviews

While it's good for a titter to picture Peter Weller in full RoboCop gear reading Hesse's classic novel of intellectual absorption with the primeval, it is not entirely necessary for full appreciation of his reading. Weller, who has a Midwestern folksy personability, reads Hesse less as a work of great literature than a philosophical manual, meant to be studied for personal improvement. Hesse can be forbidding, even for the teenage readers who often discover literature through him, so Weller wisely renders his novel familiar, comfortable and friendly. Currently wrapping up a Ph.D. at UCLA in Italian Renaissance art history, Weller has clearly been taking lessons in sounding professorial-entirely apropos here. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

"Kurt Beals’s splendid translation of this offbeat classic succeeds at once in conveying Hermann Hesse’s German cadence in elegant English and in rendering the novel’s dissonances more accessible for our times: the ambivalent, existential, dark, humorous, and magical elements within and surrounding protagonist Harry Haller. Together with the translator’s dexterous introduction for a new generation of readers and those curious to revisit the book’s multiple layers to unravel its fascinating possibilities, it is emphatically THE Steppenwolf."

Doreen Densky

"An English-language translation that highlights both the thoughtfulness and, ultimately, the sheer personal power of the original. Beals has managed the considerable feat of making a cult classic of twentieth-century literature feel completely alive for the twenty-first."

Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue

"A sharp, erudite new translation of Hesse’s moody classic."

Susan Bernofsky

"Kurt Beals makes this 1927 classic of psychedelic dreams sparkle in new technicolor splendor. Talk to your doctor about possible side effects."

Martin Puchner

"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

From the Publisher

Hesse's philosophical novel about a loner who feels divided in his soul and alienated from life was a cult classic of the 1960s’ counterculture. Peter Weller’s voice is dry, deep, almost harsh, and through much of the book, his tone is cutting, sardonic, even angry. That's a fitting take on the protagonist, Haller, but it's too much, and the tone would be better with some variation. Weller’s voice softens when Haller interacts with others, and in some of the dialogue he brings out a rhythmic lilt that is quite engaging. While a bit uneven, by and large, Weller does this dreamlike yet dour book justice. W.M. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 08 - AudioFile