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Hermann HesseSiddhartha (June 11, 2008)

LibriVox recording of Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. Translated by Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer and Semyon Chaichenets

Read by Adrian Praetzellis

Siddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha, son of an Indian Brahman, leaves his family and begins a lifelong journey towards Enlightenment. On the way he faces the entire range of human experience and emotion: he lives with ascetics, meets Gotama the Buddha, learns the art of love from Kamala the courtesan, and is transformed by the simple philosophy of the ferryman Vasudeva whose wisdom comes not from learned teachings but from observing the River. Herman Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss novelist, poet, and painter. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)

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This audio is part of the collection: LibriVox

Artist/Composer: Hermann Hesse
Date: 2008-06-11
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; audiobook; fiction; allegory; India; Gautama Buddha; spiritual journey; enlightenment; Brahmin; ascetics

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: bvisvana - - October 29, 2009
Subject: Excellent reading..
Thank you for taking the effort to put this great book in an audio format. We find Siddhartha in each one of us. It has been a tribute to listen to this wonderful insight book. Truly, a life inspiring, guiding, changing book.

"To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect.”

Reviewer: Purifier - - May 13, 2009
Subject: Professional Quality
Great recording by a solo-reader.

Reviewer: happyreader150 - - August 27, 2008
Subject: Siddhartha
This is a first-class, sublime, reading of this lovely novel. Thanks to the translators and reader for such a fine job.

Reviewer: Philippe Horak - - June 22, 2008
Subject: A lovely recording
Siddhartha was once a wandering shramana and, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gotama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But hw was not a follower of any but his own soul. Born the son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence, and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure and titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people," dragged around by his desires. Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river.
Many thanks to Mr Adrian Praetzellis for his delicate and sensitive reading of Herman Hesse's book. A lovely recording.