About the Author
Hermann Hesse was born on July 2, 1877, in Calw, Germany. His parents, Johannes and Marie, were of varied European ancestry and had done missionary work in India. Hesse was also expected to pursue a religious career, and at his parents urging he attended the theological seminary in Maulbronn.
But as Hesse would later remark, he did not possess a demeanour compatible with a rigid, often-oppressive educational system, having known from pre-adolescence that he loved poetry. After completing his schooling in 1893, Hesse found work in a bookstore, an antique store and a clock tower factory while he focused on publishing his poems and writing prose.
In the new decade, Hesse continued publishing novellas while earning acclaim for novels such as Siddhartha (1922), set in India during the time of the Buddha and reflecting the author’s own travels. In 1927 he published Steppenwolf (which this review is about), a mystical affair that chronicled the meeting of the despondent Harry Haller with the liberated Hermine. In 1930, the novel Narcissus and Goldmund followed a metaphorical work focusing on the contrasting sensibilities of a teacher and his student.
Hesse took more than a decade to complete his next, last and longest novel, The Glass Bead Game, aka Magister Ludi, which was published in 1943 and tackled the contours of a utopian society. Hesse was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work, with his health barring him from travelling to Stockholm to attend the ceremony. He died on August 9, 1962, in Montagnola, Switzerland.
A little bit about the book
Steppenwolf is a book about a man called Harry Haller who appears to go through a midlife crisis. He identifies with something he read about called the Steppenwolf because he feels like an outsider, that is cursed with conscious deep thoughts about the dirt of humanity. He is an intelligent man who is well read but has this sense of nihilism in his attitude to everyday life. He finds himself plodding through life, toiling between momentary happiness in vices and situations of comforts and on the other hand living in discontent and depression about himself and about the sick society he lives in.
He has no meaning to his life, no reason to be content, to live in this harsh society he finds himself in. Yet he is too scared to die. This conflict leads him to the feet of a woman called Hermine late one night in a pub. From here, stems a relationship of pushing emotional and physical boundaries as Hermine teaches Harry how to live again, giving him a new lease of life - but it all comes to a dramatic end and has you turning the pages in a mix of surprise, contemplation and apprehension towards the characters in the story.
The book, like a great number of Hermann hesse's books, provide us with important lessons for human beings in the 21st century. About meaning in life, our actions, awareness and perspective.
Sometimes, like Harry Haller the Steppenwolf, we need to be rocked to the core to understand perspective and our chances of living a beautiful life.
The book is a must-read for anyone interested in people, and society itself.
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