A preface generally provides a short introduction to a book, and it's usually written by the author. The Preface to Steppenwolf does this and much more. It's more accurate to say that the Preface is the key to understanding the text. Hesse provided a short introductory note to the text in 1961, in which he states that "of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other." Hesse does not serve as narrator within the Preface; instead, the nephew provides readers with their first glimpse at the book and its plan.
The narrator first meets Harry Haller when he arrives at his aunt's house to secure lodging. The narrator immediately dislikes Haller due to his appearance and his strange behavior when entering the house. He strikes the nephew as shy, unsociable, intelligent, sickly, disturbing, and slightly snobbish. The narrator admits, "I often dream of him at night, and the mere existence of such a man, much as I got to like him, has had a thoroughly disturbing and disquieting effect on me."
The nephew's opinion changes as he gets to know Haller, both directly, through conversation and observation, and indirectly through surreptitious means such as snooping through his room. During their first conversation, Haller refers to himself as "a shabby old Steppenwolf," and the nephew is unable to disassociate Haller from that title from that moment on. In fact, the introduction of this label is paramount to understanding the remainder of the Preface, as well as the remainder of the text. The nephew discovers that Steppenwolf is a man divided by his fascination with bourgeois society and his inability to live in it.
Steppenwolf leaves behind a personal manuscript and directs the nephew to do whatever he wants with it; the book is the result. The nephew believes most of the events Haller describes are fictional, but not happenstance. Instead, he describes them as "the deeply lived spiritual events which he [Haller] has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experience."
