The Story of My Experiments with Truth

One of the most read stories in our school days was the story of how a child Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi confessed to his mother about lies, stealing, and smoking cigarette.

The Story of My Experiments with Truth is the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi,¹ covering his life from early childhood through to 1921. It was written in weekly installments and published in his journal Navjivan from 1925 to 1929.

In 1998, the book was designated as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century. The English version was translated by Mahadev Desai² from the Original Gujarati writing.

The autobiography was written and serialized over the period from Nov 25, 1925 to Feb 3, 1929 in 166 installments. The installments makes it easy to read, jump around at random sections. It also encourages one to read and re-read sections without having to read the whole book.

Starting with his birth and parentage, Gandhi has given reminiscences of childhood, child marriage, relation with his wife and parents, experiences at the school, his study tour to London, efforts to be like the English gentleman, experiments in dietetics, his going to South Africa, his experiences of colour prejudice, his quest for dharma, social work in Africa, return to India, his slow and steady work for political awakening and social activities.

The book is free to read at the Mahama Gandhi archival website - Book PDF (backup).