Siddhartha (PREMIUM PAPERBACK, PENGUIN INDIA)

Description

Set in India during the time of the Buddha, Siddhartha ;is the most influential and famous novel of Nobel Prize-winning author Hermann Hesse. Desiring spiritual fulfillment, Siddhartha, a young Brahmin, leaves his home to become an ascetic-and on his journey meets the wise Gotama, the famous Buddha. But Siddhartha believes no teacher, however great, can discover meaning for an individual-and so continues alone on his quest to find himself. In his journey Siddhartha experiences life as a pious brahmin, a Samana, a rich merchant, a lover, and a father-shifting between decadence and asceticism as he navigates the material world. Still unhappy, still unfulfilled, Siddhartha is on the verge of giving it all up when he encounters the ferryman. The events that follow change his life forever. Thought-provoking, inspiring, and utterly profound-this spiritual novel has influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers.

HERMANN HESSE was born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. As a child, he lived for a time in Basle. He spent a short period studying at a seminary in Germany but soon left to work as a bookseller in Switzerland. From 1904 he devoted himself to writing. After a first volume of verse (1899), Hesse established his reputation with a series of lyrical romantic novels-Peter Camenzind (1904), Unterm Rad (The Prodigy, 1906), Gertrud (1910) and the short story, Knulp (1915). After a visit to India in 1911 he moved to Switzerland and worked for the Red Cross during the First World War. He was denounced in Germany and settled permanently in Switzerland, where he established himself as one of the greatest literary figures in the German-speaking world. His humanity, his searching philosophy developed further in such novels as Siddhartha (1922), Der Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss and Goldmund (1930) and Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game, 1943), while his poems and critical writings won him a leading place among contemporary thinkers. Hesse won many literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in 1946. He died in 1962, shortly after his eighty-fifth birthday.