Hesse's best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature's most beautiful evocations of the soul's path to liberation, with its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western civilization. Harry Haller is a gloomy and lonely character, a solitary intellectual with little joy in life. He tries to reconcile his inner untamed primal wolf and sensible man without succumbing to the bourgeois values he despises. When he meets Hermine, a careless and elusive lady who is the polar opposite of him, his life changes significantly. The Steppenwolf's story concludes in the bizarre Magic Theater for Madmen Only!