Siddhartha

A short novel set in India in the time of the Buddha, telling the life of a young Brahmin who seeks enlightenment through his own experience rather than through any teacher. Siddhartha leaves his father's house with his friend Govinda to live as a wandering ascetic among the Samanas. When they meet Gotama, the Buddha, Govinda becomes a follower, but Siddhartha, though he honours the Buddha, decides that wisdom cannot be passed on in words and goes his own way. In the city he learns love from the courtesan Kamala and business from the merchant Kamaswami, and slowly sinks into wealth, gambling and self-disgust. At his lowest point he comes to a river, where the ferryman Vasudeva teaches him to listen to it. The river becomes the book's central image of time, unity and the many voices of life. Hesse, who drew on his study of Indian thought, writes in a simple, rhythmic style, and the novel asks whether wisdom can be taught or only lived.

It is a short, beautifully simple novel about the search for meaning, and a classic Western meditation on Indian and Buddhist ideas of self, time and enlightenment.