Hermann Hesse was a celebrated Swiss-German author, known for such works as Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game. Hesse was an intellectual and autodidact, researching and studying religion, language, and art from a young age. His first novel, Peter Camenzind, was published in 1904, when Hesse was 27 years old. The themes of spirituality and psychology in Hesse’s work derive from his experiences in India, which he visited in 1911, and which he mixed with his knowledge of Carl Jung’s work in psychoanalysis. This combination of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality is often cited as the source of Hesse’s focus on the self, internal psychological exploration, and perceptions of reality. Hesse received numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Goethe Prize, both in 1946, an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern in 1947, and the 1955 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

Steppenwolf is often regarded as one of Hesse’s most successful novels, and it relates directly to his own lived experience. In the 1920s, Hesse left his wife and moved to Basel, where he struggled with suicidal ideation and despair. Unlike Siddhartha, in which the title character achieves enlightenment by emulating Buddhist philosophy, Steppenwolf dwells in this despair, though he does begin the process of healing and reintegrating his fragmented self in the Magic Theater.