Steppenwolf

By Hermann Hesse
Translated and afterword by David Horrocks

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

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.

Paperback
256 pages
Penguin Classics, 2025
Originally published in 1927
5.06 x 7.75 inches
ISBN 9780143137825
Classic Fiction