About the book
Harry Haller, a lonely, middle-aged intellectual who despises bourgeois values, is the protagonist of Hermann Hesse's tenth novel. The story is framed as his own manuscript, left to his landlady's nephew, who adds a preface and has it published as Harry Haller's Records (For Madmen Only). Wandering the city, Harry is handed a small pamphlet, the Treatise on the Steppenwolf, which seems to describe him exactly: a man split between a spiritual human nature and the wild wolf of the steppes. Drawing on a spiritual crisis in Hesse's own life in the 1920s, the novel was first published in German as Der Steppenwolf.
Sanja Zepan, co-founder of Homey, named it her favorite non-business book and argued that readers often fixate on its loneliness and forget its second part, about humor, a shift in perspective and distance.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Sanja Zepan (Co-Founder/Homey)
Favourite non-business book would be Der Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. It's a book that's often read by privileged people who feel misunderstood (usually teens), so everyone focuses on the first part about loneliness in the bourgeois world and forgets about the whole second part of the book that's about overcoming that and finding a sense of humour, a shift in perspective, and a bit of distance. Jack Kerouac even dismisses the book in the fashion of the precisely same intellectual hypocrisy this book talks about, which to me sounds like hipsters talking about how other people are hipsters and fake, because they themselves "have been listening the band before it was popular". Also, Steppenwolf is very relevant today - especially in the often lonely world of startup founders, where everyone talks about how great they're doing. So, the message still resonates with me.
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