Der Steppenwolf

Hesse's classic story, a potent combination of Eastern and Western insights into the human search for meaning, raises issues that are perhaps more important in our current cultural climate than ever before. Steppenwolf, first published in German in 1927, is given new life in this fresh translation. Thomas Wayne presents a contemporary take on the lone individual lost in the ironic good fortune and security of bourgeois banality and cultural conformity. Harry Haller, the hero, has all the insight, all the leisure, all the material goods he needs, yet he is not at peace with his life and decides to commit suicide. Then Hermine and her friends open to him the countless pathways of self-discovery. Basil Creighton's 1929 translation (revised in 1963 by Joseph Mileck) is the best-known version in English; it skips words, smoothes out long, involved passages, unnecessarily improves the text all things Thomas Wayne refuses to do. He emphasizes a strict adherence and reverence for the literal -- a Hesse for the 21st century, meaningful and faithful to the original. Thomas Wayne presents a contemporary take on Hesse's classic story, so apt today, of the lone individual lost in the ironic good fortune and security of bourgeois banality and cultural conformity. Harry Haller has all the insight, all the leisure, all the material goods he needs, yet he is not at peace with his life. A potent combination of Eastern and Western insights into the human search for meaning is given new life in a fresh translation A story that focuses on the loneliness and suffering of the protagonist, Harry Haller, who feels that he has no place in a world filled with meaningless frivolity. Having decided to take his own life a chance encounter causes him to change his views and he begins to learn ways to enjoy life. One of the most misunderstood of his novels the book is, according to Hesse, about the possibilities of transcendence and healing.