An okay English translation is freely available from Project Gutenberg. You may prefer to get a better-quality translation from the library or whatever, but if you're lazy like me you can just grab it from here:

https://ia800306.us.archive.org/18/items/siddhartha02500gut/siddh10.txt

This piece was inspired by Siddhartha. It's one of my favorites.

I'm not quite sure I understood this book the first time I read it. Is the wisdom about the sound "Om" and true contradictions and such what people like about it? Are there other works by Hesse I should read to see a general theme that culminates here?

>>1435
I can't say what other people like about it. I liked that as it started from the beginning, I felt it was leading towards a certain wisdom, but then at the end it is revealed that the entire jounrey is one single coherent message. I mean, he tells you at the end, the baby crying, the man sinning, the holy man, the old man, the lustful woman, they are all the same river, all at once. There is no time. So after he tells you that, you have to look at the whole book in this way, that he is at once every instance he ever was and ever will be, and realizing that, he is at peace. Honestly I didn't see any contradictions.