O Lobo da Estepe

Harry Haller is a middle-aged intellectual who feels like a wolf caught in a human body. Disgusted with the bourgeois society around him, he thinks about ending his life on his fiftieth birthday. A pamphlet he receives on the street, the Treatise on the Steppenwolf, analyses his divided nature. He meets the young Hermine, who pushes him to learn to dance, enjoy jazz and give in to pleasure, and he is drawn into a world of nightclubs and masked balls. The book ends in the Magic Theatre, where Harry's many selves appear. Hermann Hesse wrote it in 1927, drawing on his own depression and psychoanalysis.

It is a good fit for readers who like inward-looking novels about identity and rebellion. Those who feel pulled between convention and freedom will find a sympathetic, strange companion.

Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?