Siddhartha

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature A book—rare in our arid age—that takes root in the heart and grows there for a lifetime. Here the spirituality of the East and the West have met in a novel that enfigures deep human wisdom with a rich and colorful imagination.. . Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty it is the story of a soul's long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role on this earth. As a youth the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple's role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt—a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love affair with the beautiful courtesan Kamala the temptation of success and riches the heartache of struggle with his own son to final renunciation and self-knowledge.. . The name Siddhartha is one often given to the Buddha himself—perhaps a clue to Hesse's aims in contrasting the traditional legendary figure with his own conception as a European (Hesse was Swiss) of a spiritual explorer.