Siddhartha

About the book

Siddhartha leaves the security of his upbringing in search of an understanding that inherited practices have not supplied. With his friend Govinda, he encounters ascetic discipline and the teaching of Gotama, yet remains troubled by the difference between hearing a truth and experiencing it. His journey later opens into work, desire, attachment, and the demands of ordinary life. Hesse gives these changes the measured quality of a parable, allowing repeated images and meetings to acquire new meanings as the protagonist changes. The river becomes especially important to the book's attention to listening and time. The novel asks how a search for release from the self can remain caught in personal ambition, and whether apparently mistaken paths may still become part of learning.

• Spiritual searching
• Experience and knowledge
• Time

Why read it

For a reflective novel that makes the relationship between teaching and lived experience central to a spiritual journey.

English translation