In Hermann Hesse’s debut novel, the protagonist Peter grows up in a quiet mountain village. When he’s older, Peter leaves the village in order to experience the world. Published in 1904, this bildungsroman became the first of several novels by Hesse wherein a protagonist’s spiritual journey is the prominent narrative theme. In this paper, a queer reading of Peter Camenzind is offered, highlighting the novel’s subversive expressions of sexuality, gender and desire. The main focus of the reading is the friendship between Peter and Boppi, a cripple who Peter meets on his journey towards maturity. The men become close friends and roommates, and Peter, profoundly moved by his disabled companion, cares for him until he dies. Drawing mainly on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s thoughts on touch and affect, combined with Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy on responsibility for the Other, this paper hypothesizes that Peter’s and Boppi’s friendship has homoerotic implications. The paper also argues that as a narrative structure, Peter’s spiritual journey enables a wide scope of understanding same-sex desire, gender and sexuality, through themes of soul searching, identity and responsibility. Within the field of literary analysis, narrative plays an essential part. However, the queer reader’s interpretation of any literary narrative will differ from the author’s original, as well as from common understandings of the work. With a queer-critical core, this paper heavily emphasizes homoeroticism in Peter Camenzind and in so doing, it boldly suggests an altogether alternative narrative to Hesse’s novel, that challenges heteronormative assumptions about the story.