The Magic Mountain

"The Magic Mountain is simply one of the greatest novels ever written."—The Guardian
First published in 1924, ‘The Magic Mountain’s widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature, written by Thomas Mann, a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
It recounts the story of Hans Castorp, a young orphan who, while visiting his cousin in a sanatorium where she is being treated for tuberculosis, contracts the illness himself and ends up staying for treatment. The secluded sanatorium becomes his entire world while serving as a reflection of pre-war Europe. Written prior to World War I, and heavily revised afterward, it is a complex and dense novel that effortlessly combines realism and symbolism, and it has mesmerized critics and scholars since its publication.

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.