His family was happy to see him, but they had hoped to meet the Siddhartha they knew, not the Buddha he had become.

Long before he became the enlightened leader, he was a boy oblivious of the world. As the young prince navigates politics and relationships, he slowly begins to question his oppressively perfect life. Meanwhile his family struggles to maintain their deception – from banishing the old and sick to hiding their own advancing age – in the hope that they can mould him into a dutiful king.

In Advait Kottary's intricately woven narrative, raw human emotion and conflict is tempered with the boundless compassion of the Buddha. Exciting and insightful in equal measure, Siddhartha is at once a riveting story and a profound meditation on our shared quest for truth.