Author:  Hermann Hesse
Pages:  92  (Available Only In Paperback)

This is a story of boyhood friends from a small Indian village who remain connected throughout their lives, sometimes traveling the same path and sometimes different roads, in pursuit of the same goal: understanding the meaning of life, achieving wisdom and peace through answering the question of how best to live in this world.  Siddhartha and Govinda become restless with the Hindu teachings of the village elders and set out to explore the world. Their paths diverge when Govinda stays in Savathi to become a disciple of the Buddha while Siddhartha, still feeling he has not found the truth, continues traveling. His journey takes him through the "real" world of lust, material wealth and greed; he comes out many years later older and wiser and "travels on to return" to a simpler life physically and spiritually. When Govinda finds him again near the end of their lives, it is clear that he feels Siddhartha has actually achieved the goal they had, not by withdrawing and contemplating the world but by engaging and experiencing it in all its messy splendor.