I would have given this book five stars if I hadn't grown up in a Hindu/Buddhist culture. There are some people for whom this book is life-changing because it presents to them a whole new way of looking at life and the world. It didn't do that for me, not because I didn't like it or it was a bad book, but because I grew up having already heard a lot of the ideals espoused in Siddhartha. I may be making this book sound like some guidebook to a Buddhist lifestyle, but it's really not. In fact, to take it as a guidebook for Buddhism/being Zen would be, in my opinion, to have defeated Hesse's point entirely. Siddartha does not espousing Buddhism or any way of living at ALL. It's really a plea for all its readers, whatever religion they subscribe to, to find their own paths in life. It's one of the driving themes of the book, that advice on what you should do with you life and how you should lead it come not from external sources, but from within. You need to make your own choices and accept whatever happens as a result. You need to let yourself make mistakes and learn from them instead of having someone spoon-feed or shelter you for your entire life. Hesse isn't telling us readers to drop what we're doing and do things the way he, or Buddha, or Siddartha would do them; he's asking us who we really are and urging us to find out. Siddartha is, more than anything else, a journey to get you started on finding yourself, a journey that I would recommend any good reader embark on.