Dissatisfied with the hollowness he senses in his privileged way of life, Siddhartha, the handsome son of a Brahmin, leaves his family and his great friend, Govinda, in search of a higher state of being. Siddhartha's quest for insight takes him from immense wealth and luxury, and the pleasures of sensual and paternal love, to the purity of stringent asceticism. Worn out by his wanderings, he finds himself by the banks of a river, and there a humble ferryman teaches him his most valuable lesson yet. Hermann Hesse's short, elegant novel, echoing the life of the Buddha, has been cherished by readers for decades as an unforgettable spiritual primer. An undeniable classic of modern literature, it is also a tender moral allegory whose teachings continue to unfold more than a century after it first appeared.
