Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse

"For madmen only."

Harry Haller is a middle-aged intellectual who feels torn between his human side (bourgeois, refined) and his 'wolf' side (wild, solitary, anti-social). Suicidal and alienated, he discovers a 'Magic Theater' that allows him to explore the multiple facets of his personality through surreal, hallucinatory experiences.

This novel became a counterculture classic. It explores the crisis of the modern individual, the conflict between the instinctual and the rational, and the need to embrace the chaos of the soul.