LoveReading Says
August 2010 Good Housekeeping selection.
On My Bookshelf by Joseph Fiennes...
I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse when I was 16 and it ignited my passion for literature – I’d been completely uninterested at school. It provides a simple breakdown of Buddhist philosophy as it follows a man who tries to find restoration on a higher plane.
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Siddhartha Synopsis
Dissatisfied with the traditional Vedic way of life, Siddhartha, the handsome son of a Brahmin, leaves his family and his friend, Govinda, in search of a higher state of being. Having experienced the myriad forms of existence, from the wealthy and luxurious, to the pleasures of sensual and paternal love, Siddhartha finally settles down beside a river where a humble ferryman teaches him his most valuable lesson yet. Hermann Hesse's short, elegant novel, echoing the life of the Buddha, has been cherished by readers for decades as an unforgettable spiritual primer. As part of the new editions of the Peter Owen Cased Classics series, this special hardback edition carries a dust jacket with false die-cutting of a lotus flower, while printed on the cover board is a striking work by British contemporary artist Andy Harper.
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About Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was born in Claw, Germany in 1877. As a child he lived for a time in Basle. He spent a short period studying at a seminary in Germany but soon left to work as a bookseller in Switzerland. From 1904 he devoted himself to writing. After a first volume of verse (1899), Hesse established his reputation with a series of lyrical romantic novels - Peter Camenzind (1904), Unterm Rad (1906) Gertrud (1910) and the short story, Knulp (1915).
After a visit to India in 1911 he moved to Switzerland and worked for the Red Cross during the First World War. He was denounced in Germany and settled permanently in Switzerland, where he established himself as one of the greatest literary figures of the German-speaking world. His humanity, his searching philosophy developed further in such novels as Siddartha (1922), Der Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss und Goldmund (1930) and Das Glasperlenspeil (1943), while his poems and critical writings won him a leading place among contemporary thinkers. Hesse won many literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in 1946. He died in 1962, shortly after his eighty-fifth birthday.
Thomas Mann said of him 'For me his lifework, with its roots in native German romanticism, for all its occasional strange individualism, its now humorously petulant and now mystically yearning estrangement from the world and the times, belongs to the highest and purest spiritual aspirations and labours of our epoch.'
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