Siddhartha

What can no teacher, doctrine, or inherited certainty do for a life?

Siddhartha — Complete Annotated Edition. In a complete new English translation that preserves the pulse and repetition of Hesse’s prose, Siddhartha follows a seeker who refuses to let knowledge stand in for experience. Read the novel first, then return with notes, a glossary, a prose setting guide, a character map, and discussion questions that keep its questions open.

More to discover after the final page
Read the classic. Stay in its world.

A wealth of reading material invites you to keep exploring the work, even after the story ends.

Follow the connections between characters with a visual relationship map.

Use the discussion questions to explore scenes and interpretations with your reading group.

A note from CALIDER
Read Siddhartha as a book of returns: a word, image, place, or friendship comes back altered by experience. This edition supports that slow attention with guidance to the prose’s repetitions, notes on its language and setting, a prose setting guide, a visual narrative diagram, and a character map, then questions that let the novel remain more than a single lesson.

Contents
The Son of the Brahman · With the Samanas · Gotama · Awakening · Part Two · Kamala · With the Childlike People · Samsara · By the River · The Ferryman · The Son · Om · Govinda

Read an excerpt — The Son of the Brahman
In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank by the boats, in the shade of the sal forest, in the shade of the fig tree, Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. The sun browned his fair shoulders on the riverbank, at his bath, at the holy ablutions, at the holy sacrifices. Shade flowed into his black eyes in the mango grove, at the boys' games, at his mother's singing, at the holy sacrifices, at the lessons of his father, the scholar, at the discussions of the wise men. For a long time now Siddhartha had taken part in the discussions of the wise men, had practiced debate with Govinda, had practiced with Govinda the art of contemplation, the service of meditation. Already he understood how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself as he breathed in, to speak it silently out of himself as he breathed out, with his soul gathered, his brow surrounded by the radiance of the clear-thinking mind. Already he understood how to know Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

Reading resources
Publisher’s Foreword · A Note on the Text · Translator's Note · Reading Guide · Introduction · Chronology · Notes · Historical Context · The Work in History · The Shape of the Narrative · Timeline of the Story · Themes and Motifs · Afterlives and Adaptations · Place and Setting Guide · Glossary · Character Map · Questions for Discussion · About the Author · Suggestions for Further Reading

About the author
Hermann Hesse was born on 2 July 1877 in Calw, a small town in the Black Forest in Württemberg. He grew up in a Swabian Pietist household with close ties to India. His father was an Estonian-born Pietist preacher; his mother, Marie Gundert, had been born at a mission in South India, where her father, Hermann Gundert, served with the Basel Mission and compiled a grammar and dictionary of Malayalam. Gundert gave the boy the run of his library, which was full of world literature. Long afterward Hesse said that the strongest force in shaping him was the Christianity his parents lived rather than preached. Asia came later, as a second inheritance.