The novel’s twelve chapters are divided into two parts - the first is dedicated to Romain Rolland, whose writings on Eastern Philosophy impacted Hesse, and the second to Hesse’s cousin Wilhelm Gundert, a scholar of East Asian religions and languages. Set in the 6th century BCE in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, it is structured like a Bildungsroman, a typically German literary genre, that traces the moral and psychological development of a protagonist, who goes in search of life’s questions, from childhood to adulthood. Yet, it brought him recognition as an author of modern German Literature globally, way beyond German-speaking Europe. Siddhartha is neither Hesse’s debut novel nor did it like The Glassbead Game (1943) bring its author the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. A hope for emancipation and a classic Western narrative veiled in Indian garb, the Nobel Prize winner's work brought him recognition as an author of modern German Literature globally, way beyond German-speaking Europe, still dominant in the south-Asian subcontinent.
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