
Siddhartha
Paperback
Other Editions of This Title:
Digital Audiobook (2/28/2018)
Digital Audiobook (2/28/2019)
Digital Audiobook (9/17/2017)
Digital Audiobook (1/23/2019)
Digital Audiobook (3/7/2020)
Digital Audiobook (10/12/2020)
Paperback (2/7/2011)
Mass Market (12/1/1981)
Paperback (12/31/2002)
Paperback (8/18/2010)
Paperback (10/24/2008)
Paperback (7/28/2008)
Paperback (10/31/2010)
Hardcover (8/5/2007)
Paperback (8/5/2007)
Description
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.
Praise For Siddhartha…
— The Nation
In Siddhartha the setting is Indian and we encounter the Buddha, but the author’s ethos is still closer to Goethe.
— Washington Post Book World
One could even hope that Hesse’s readers are hungrily imbibing Siddhartha, and that they will be so wisely foolish as to live by it.
— Chicago Tribune
Hermann Hesse is the greatest writer of the century.
— San Francisco Chronicle
New Directions, 9780811200684, 128pp.
Publication Date: January 17, 1957
About the Author
Hilda Rosner is an author and translator.