excerpted from
Siddhartha

By Hermann Hesse • December 2011

This selection is available to active subscribers only.

Already a subscriber? Sign in.

Hermann Hesse

Correspondence

When I came across the excerpt from Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha in the December 2011 Dog-Eared Page, I got goose bumps. That exact passage had opened my world forty years ago.

I grew up Catholic yet have questioned religious dogma since I was told at age six that God loves us all but sends us to hell if we are not baptized. Siddhartha was required reading in my Catholic high school, and it liberated me from the need to follow any religious faith, freeing me to find my own path.

Hilarie Burke Flawil
Switzerland

More Letters

Thank You Your donations helped to keep our ad-free, nonprofit magazine in circulation last year, funding everything from production to distribution. Learn how you made a difference last year. Learn More