Siddhartha

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.

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.