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