The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

Vintage Books, 1969 - Fiction - 727 pages

First published in 1924 in German, "The Magic Mountain" is the thoughtful and introspective novel by Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann. Widely regarded as one of the most important modern works of the 20th century, Mann's story follows the aristocratic Hans Castorp as he leaves his comfortable family home to visit his ailing friend in a distant sanatorium located high in the Swiss Alps. Castorp's stay begins as a brief vacation before he starts his adult life as an engineer in Germany and evolves into several years spent in this isolated institution recovering from a newly discovered illness. Castorp meets a fascinating cast of characters in his mountain retreat, including anarchists, socialists, and royalty, as he attempts to find meaning in his life. In a work acclaimed as both philosophical and deeply profound, Castorp and his fellow patients have little to do but consider their lives and fill their seemingly endless days with reflection and debate while the rest of Europe marches towards a world war. "The Magic Mountain" is a thought-provoking work that grapples with the eternal human concerns of love, money, politics, and the inexorable passage of time. This edition follows the translation of Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter and is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Contents

• CHAPTER I: 3
• NUMBER 34: 10
• CHAPTER II: 19

About the author

Thomas Mann was born into a well-to-do upper class family in Lubeck, Germany. His mother was a talented musician and his father a successful merchant. From this background, Mann derived one of his dominant themes, the clash of views between the artist and the merchant. Mann's novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), traces the declining fortunes of a merchant family much like his own as it gradually loses interest in business but gains an increasing artistic awareness. Mann was only 26 years old when this novel made him one of Germany's leading writers. Mann went on to write The Magic Mountain (1924), in which he studies the isolated world of the tuberculosis sanitarium. The novel was based on his wife's confinement in such an institution. Doctor Faustus (1947), his masterpiece, describes the life of a composer who sells his soul to the devil as a price for musical genius. Mann is also well known for Death in Venice (1912) and Mario the Magician (1930), both of which portray the tensions and disturbances in the lives of artists. His last unfinished work is The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1954), a brilliantly ironic story about a nineteenth-century swindler. An avowed anti-Nazi, Mann left Germany and lived in the United States during World War II. He returned to Switzerland after the war and became a celebrated literary figure in both East and West Germany. In 1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Magic Mountain; A Vintage book, V-497; Penguin modern classics; Vintage book
• Author: Thomas Mann
• Translated by: Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 1969
• Original from: Indiana University
• Digitized: Feb 18, 2011
• ISBN: 0394704975, 9780394704975
• Length: 727 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Psychological; Fiction / Satire