The kind of book you don't keep — you pass it forward.
Siddhartha
A young man's lifelong spiritual search leads him from asceticism and worldly pleasures to the wisdom of a river.
136g
Weighs the same as Sawyer Squeeze + Flour Tortilla
- Lightweight
- Changes the Way You See
- Fiction/Spiritual
There is a reason this book has been riding in backpacks pretty much nonstop since Hermann Hesse published it in 1922, after a trip to India and a long immersion in Eastern thought. A young man leaves everything to learn directly from a river. It is nearly a fable, about wisdom that can only be gained by living. At the right moment, this book can reset the course of your life. It's the kind of book you don't keep — you pass it forward.
Field notes
Hesse wrote the first part of Siddhartha rapidly, then stopped for eighteen months. He could describe the search for enlightenment but had not found a convincing way to write its arrival. During the impasse, he underwent psychotherapy with Carl Jung and immersed himself in Eastern philosophy. His eventual breakthrough came through Lao Tzu: Hesse acknowledged that his story began with Brahman and Buddha but would end in Tao. The river's wisdom owes as much to Chinese thought as to Indian spirituality. The novel's central conviction—that wisdom cannot simply be taught—was also the problem Hesse had to solve in writing it.