LoveReading Says
August 2010 Good Housekeeping selection.
On My Bookshelf by Joseph Fiennes...
I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse when I was 16 and it ignited my passion for literature – I’d been completely uninterested at school. It provides a simple breakdown of Buddhist philosophy as it follows a man who tries to find restoration on a higher plane.
LoveReading
Find This Book In
Siddhartha Synopsis
One America's Favorite Books, PBS's The Great American Read
Nobel Prize-winning author: This classic of 20th-century literature chronicles the spiritual evolution of a man living in India at the time of the Buddha-a tale that has inspired generations of readers
Here is a fresh translation of the classic Herman Hesse novel, from Sherab Chödzin Kohn-a gifted translator and longtime student of Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. Kohn invites readers along Siddhartha's spiritual journey-experiencing his highs and lows, loves and disappointments along the way. We first meet Siddhartha as a privileged brahmin's son. Handsome, well-loved, and growing increasingly dissatisfied with the life expected of him, he then sets out on his journey, not realizing that he is fulfilling the prophesies proclaimed at his birth. Siddhartha blends in with the world, showing the reader the beauty and intricacies of the mind, nature, and his experiences on the path to enlightenment.
Sherab Chödzin Kohn's flowing, poetic translation conveys the philosophical and spiritual nuances of Hesse's text, paying special attention to the qualities of meditative experience. Also included is an extensive introduction by Paul W. Morris that discusses the impact Siddhartha has had on American culture.
About This Edition
About Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was born in Claw, 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 (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 of the German-speaking world. His humanity, his searching philosophy developed further in such novels as Siddartha (1922), Der Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss und Goldmund (1930) and Das Glasperlenspeil (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.
Thomas Mann said of him 'For me his lifework, with its roots in native German romanticism, for all its occasional strange individualism, its now humorously petulant and now mystically yearning estrangement from the world and the times, belongs to the highest and purest spiritual aspirations and labours of our epoch.'
More About Hermann Hesse
