Steppenwolf

Between a Life Crisis and a New Beginning Harry Haller's Journey into the Unknown

First published in 1927, Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf became an international bestseller and a touchstone for generations of young readers. Yet this is no coming-of-age story, but the story of a man in crisis who can no longer go on living as he has before.

Harry Haller, the »Steppenwolf,« feels like a stranger in a world where the certainties of the past are crumbling. »Caught between eras,« he wanders the city without a sense of belonging, torn between a respectable bourgeois existence and a longing for a radically different life. When, on the brink of suicide, he meets the vivacious Hermine, she leads him on an unexpected journey into the unknown. She teaches him to dance and introduces him to a world of new experiences and encounters. At Hermine's side, amid the excesses of the city's nightlife, Haller discovers that the human being is not a single, unified self, but an infinite multiplicity. Only when he learns to embrace the contradictions within himself with humor does he find a new way of approaching life.

• Gift edition celebrating the 100th anniversary of its first publication on June 1, 2027
• A beautifully bound gift edition with sprayed edges
• The international bestseller translated into more than 50 languages

Autorentext
Hermann Hesse, geboren am 2.7.1877 in Calw/Württemberg als Sohn eines baltendeutschen Missionars und der Tochter eines württembergischen Indologen, starb am 9.8.1962 in Montagnola bei Lugano. Er wurde 1946 mit dem Nobelpreis für Literatur, 1955 mit dem Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels ausgezeichnet. Nach einer Buchhändlerlehre war er seit 1904 freier Schriftsteller, zunächst in Gaienhofen am Bodensee, später im Tessin. Er ist einer der bekanntesten deutschen Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts.