Siddhartha: An Indian Tale

by Hermann Hesse

Overview

Siddhartha is a philosophical novel by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1922 in Germany. It explores the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha (around the 5th to 6th century BCE).

Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin (a Hindu priestly class), is dissatisfied with the teachings and rituals of traditional religion. He seeks deeper spiritual enlightenment and embarks on a journey that takes him through different stages of life:

Siddhartha grows up in a religious environment but becomes disillusioned with traditional teachings.

He joins a group of ascetic monks (Samanas), practicing self-denial and fasting. Still, he finds no lasting fulfillment.

He and his friend Govinda meet Gautama Buddha. Govinda stays with the Buddha, but Siddhartha leaves, believing that enlightenment can't be taught-only experienced.

Siddhartha explores worldly pleasures. He meets Kamala, a courtesan who teaches him love, and Kamaswami, a wealthy merchant who teaches him business. He becomes rich but eventually feels spiritually empty.

Siddhartha leaves his luxurious life and finds peace by the river with a ferryman named Vasudeva, who teaches him to listen to the river. The river becomes a symbol of life, unity, and timelessness.

Through deep listening and reflection, Siddhartha finally attains a state of peace and enlightenment-not through doctrine, but through experience and unity with nature and life.

The themes include:

The Journey of Self-Discovery

Spiritual Enlightenment

The Illusion of Duality (suffering vs. joy, rich vs. poor)

The Limitations of Doctrine

Time and Timelessness

Hesse was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

The novel became especially popular in the 1960s counterculture movement in the U.S. and Europe due to its emphasis on spiritual growth outside organized religion.

About the author

Hermann Karl Hesse (2 July 1877 - 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions, combined with his involvement with Jungian analysis, helped to shape his literary work. His best-known novels include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality.

Hesse was born in 1877 in Calw, a town in Germany's Northern Black Forest. His father was a Baltic German and his grandmother had French-Swiss roots. As a child, he shared a passion for poetry and music with his mother, and was well-read and cultured, due in part to the influence of his polyglot grandfather.

As a youth, he studied briefly at a Protestant boarding school, the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren, where he struggled with bouts of depression and once attempted suicide, which temporarily landed him in a sanatorium. Hesse completed Gymnasium and passed his examinations in 1893, when his formal education ended. An autodidact, Hesse read theological treatises, Greek mythology, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Friedrich Nietzsche after his formal education concluded. His first works of poetry and prose were being published in the 1890s and early 1900s with his first novel, Peter Camenzind, appearing in 1904. (Wikipedia.org)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798897731855
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	07/12/2025
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

In the 1960s, especially in the United States, the novels of Hermann Hesse were widely embraced by young readers who found in his protagonists a reflection of their own search for meaning in a troubled world. Hesse’s rich allusions to world mythologies, especially those of Asia, and his persistent theme of the individual striving for integrity in opposition to received opinions and mass culture appealed to a generation in upheaval and in search of renewed values.

Born in southern Germany in 1877, Hesse came from a family of missionaries, scholars, and writers with strong ties to India. This early exposure to the philosophies and religions of Asia—filtered and interpreted by thinkers thoroughly steeped in the intellectual traditions and currents of modern Europe—provided Hesse with some of the most pervasive elements in his short stories and novels, especially Siddhartha (1922) and Journey to the East (1932).

Hesse concentrated on writing poetry as a young man, but his first successful book was a novel, Peter Camenzind (1904). The income it brought permitted him to settle with his wife in rural Switzerland and write full-time. By the start of World War I in 1914, Hesse had produced several more novels and had begun to write the considerable number of book reviews and articles that made him a strong influence on the literary culture of his time.

During the war, Hesse was actively involved in relief efforts. Depression, criticism for his pacifist views, and a series of personal crises—combined with what he referred to as the “war psychosis” of his times—led Hesse to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang, a student of Carl Jung. Out of these years came Demian (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience. This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse’s subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), and Narcissus and Goldmund (1930). Hesse worked on his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game (1943), for twelve years. This novel was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hesse died at his home in Switzerland in 1962.

Calling his life a series of “crises and new beginnings,” Hesse clearly saw his writing as a direct reflection of his personal development and his protagonists as representing stages in his own evolution. In the 1950s, Hesse described the dominant theme of his work: “From Camenzind to Steppenwolf and Josef Knecht [protagonist of The Glass Bead Game], they can all be interpreted as a defense (sometimes also as an SOS) of the personality, of the individual self.” 

Joachim Neugroschel (translator) has won three PEN translation awards and the French-American translation prize. He has also translated Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, both for Penguin Classics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Ralph Freedman (introducer), Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is acclaimed for his biographies Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis, and Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke.
 

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Siddhartha"
by .
Copyright © 1999 Hermann Hesse.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Siddhartha Introduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Translation
SIDDHARTHA

Editorial Reviews

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

From the Publisher