Siddhartha

A day comes when the traditional teaching given to the Brahmins is no longer enough for the young Siddhartha.

When ascetic samanas pass through the town, he follows them, familiarises himself with all their practices, but cannot find the peace of soul he seeks. Then comes the encounter with Gotama, the Buddha. While recognising the sublimity of his doctrine, he cannot accept it, and begins another life alongside the beautiful Kamala and the merchant Kamaswani. The riches he acquires make him a new man, a materialist, a character he eventually comes to dislike.

He sets off through the forest, to the edge of the river. It is there that the final phase of the cycle of his development is fulfilled.

Set against a wonderfully recreated India, written in a style of rare mastery, Siddhartha, a novel of initiation, is one of the greatest works by Hermann Hesse, Nobel Prize in Literature.