A young Brahmin leaves his father's house because the prayers no longer taste of water. He joins the holy wanderers. He meets the Buddha and bows, but does not stay. He crosses a river. On the other side he becomes a lover, a merchant, a gambler — and almost a drowned man. He crosses the river again. He sits beside it for years, listening, until the river teaches him what no teacher could.

Hermann Hesse wrote this small book in two parts, nine years apart, during and after a deep crisis. He had read the Upanishads. He had read the Buddhists. He had been analyzed by a student of Jung. And he had learned — the slow way, the only way — that wisdom cannot be borrowed.

Here are twelve small rooms for it. Each room has one motif, one German sentence, and one story for company. There are no pictures on these walls. Only a few ink lines, as a ferryman might draw in the sand while he waits for the next traveller.