Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

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Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin in ancient India, leaves home with his friend Govinda to seek enlightenment among the wandering ascetics, then meets the…

About the recording

Author: Hermann Hesse
Read by: Adrian Praetzellis
Length: 5:06:08
Parts: 12
Language: English
Source: LibriVox · Internet Archive

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About this book

Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin in ancient India, leaves home with his friend Govinda to seek enlightenment among the wandering ascetics, then meets the Buddha himself, admires him, but will not follow him, believing that wisdom cannot be taught. He goes his own way, into the city and the love of the courtesan Kamala, into wealth, gambling and disgust, and finally to a river and a humble ferryman, Vasudeva, from whom he learns to listen to the water and to see the unity of all things.

Context and significance

Hermann Hesse published the novel in German in 1922, years after a journey to the East and a long study of Indian thought, and it found its widest readership decades later. The translation is a free one made by a group of volunteers for Project Gutenberg, and Adrian Praetzellis reads it alone, in about five hours.

This is a LibriVox recording, read by volunteers and dedicated to the public domain; its audio files are kept by the Internet Archive, which plays and serves them here. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before republishing it. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal