The story concerns a young Brahman who quits his comfortable to join a roving group of holy men striving to empty their hearts of passion and desire through self-denial and meditation. discouraged by failure to find Nirvana after three years of the strictest asceticism, the young seeker turns the fleshly world, where he becomes a wealthy merchant and part takes of sensual pleasures with a sophisticated courtesan........

The present edition, first published by Dover in 1998, contains the full German text of the work originally published by S. Fischer, Berlin, in 1922, along with a new English translation by Stanley Appelbaum, who also wrote the introduction, footnotes and Glossary of Indian Terms, and added a table of contents.