What a brilliant book! This is essentially a psychological novel that centres around the character of Harry Haller, a.k.a Steppenwolf. Harry is 50 years old and takes life way too seriously. He is a snob, constantly considering himself superior to everyone else and stuck up in his ideal world of fine arts and philosophy; at the same time, a part of his personality is wild, untamed, instinctual: a steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes. Harry is constantly caught in this dichotomy between the snob and the wolf, and he is unable to feel at home anywhere. He feels like he is not (and cannot) be part of the rest of society. He constantly despises the "bourgeois" world around him, while at the same time being essentially part of it. He suffers deeply from this situation, and considers killing himself. As a 50 year old man, he is very much stuck in his ways and it's difficult for him to change.

Yet change is what he does, eventually - or tries to. In a chance encounter, he befriends Hermione, a girl who teaches him how to dance and love. Reluctantly, he accepts. Another girl, Maria, teaches him how to love. Pablo, a saxophone player (and a man whom Harry looks down on for pretty much the entire book, but he is the one who ultimately teaches Harry the most important lesson), leads him to the "Magic theatre", and there follows a crescendo of situations that become more and more absurd and allegoric. The book ends with Harry on the path to salvation.

Among my favourite passages are the chess player, who teaches Harry the "game of life", that is, the continuous re-arrangement of the myriad pieces of one's personality. The chess player teaches him that there is no such thing as a fixed self, and that playing the "game of life" means to constantly find a balance between many personality traits, in a process that is in constant motion. The final scene with Mozart is quite memorable too: in this, Harry learns that he needs to laugh and listen to the "radio music of life", that is, accept life at it is, imperfect and distorted, rather than trying to live in the perfect (but unreal) world of ideas and ideals.