Hermann Hesse 
Siddhartha (A New Directions Paperback) 

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

 

A book—rare in our arid age—that takes root in the heart and grows there for a lifetime. 

Here the spirituality of the East and the West have met in a novel that enfigures deep human wisdom with a rich and colorful imagination.



Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, it is the story of a soul’s long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man’s role on this earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple’s role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt—a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love affair with the beautiful courtesan Kamala, the temptation of success and riches, the heartache of struggle with his own son, to final renunciation and self-knowledge.



The name ‘Siddhartha’ is one often given to the Buddha himself—perhaps a clue to Hesse’s aims in contrasting the traditional legendary figure with his own conception, as a European (Hesse was Swiss), of a spiritual explorer.

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Hilda Rosner is an author and translator.