Most men will not swim before they are able to. I would recommend Hesse's fantastic fairy tales for that matter. Author: Hermann Hesse Translated by Basil Creighton Revised by Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz. Steppenwolf Quotes Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest. In the book, Hesses only novel set in a city during the late 1920s, a young businessman. Even when you read a short but challenging story, you have the time to think about it afterwards and you will feel more at ease if you need to look something up in a dictionary and perhaps progress at a slow pace. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators. Hermann Hesse, a German neoromantic novelist, wrote Der Steppenwolf in 1927 when he was fifty years old. As for learning german, I think depending on your immersion in the language it's doable but I would perhaps recommend something shorter (Steppenwolf is not super long but also not short) when learning the language because it's more stressfree. Long sentences are not a rariety, rare (or out of fashion) words are used - though not exessively and Hesse is fond of neologisms (and it can be a pain in the arse when writers use words that do technically not exist in a language one is not extremely well versed in), though mostly (or perhaps even exclusively) in the form of compound words which should be decipherable to a foreign reader aswell I would assume.įrom a german perspective I would say it reads like most books, neither easy nor hard (most of the 18th/19th century classics should be harder), it does show that Hesse is well versed in litterature but his language is really accesible (his wording is unique though). I know you asked for someone whose mother tongue is not german but I thought I'd answer anyway (and technically I have another non-german mothertongue).įor me personally it was not hard to read but I would assume that it is not easy to read unless your german is quite good.

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