| The Magic Mountain: Introduction by A. S. Byatt Contributor(s): Mann, Thomas (Author), Woods, John E. (Translator), Byatt, A. S. (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1400044219 ISBN-13: 9781400044214 Publisher: Everyman's Library OUR PRICE: $31.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 2005 Annotation: Mann began working on The Magic Mountain in 1912, following a few weeks' visit to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Twelve years later the novel that had begun as a short story appeared in two long volumes. The war that had postponed the book's completion had "incalculably enriched its content." Now it was a massive meditation on "the inner significance of an epoch, the pre-war period of European history." It was an immense international success from the time of its publication. The Magic Mountain is the story of an unassuming, undistinguished young engineer named Hans Castorp who sits on the balcony of a sanatorium, wrapped in his camel's hair blanket, thermometer in his mouth, naively but earnestly pondering the meaning of life, time, and his love for the beautiful Frau Chauchat. Among the other characters on this Germanic ship of fools are the malapropian Frau Stohr; Hofrat Behrens, the head doctor, and his hearty but sick-looking sidekick, Dr. Krokowski; Ludovico Settembrini, the enlightened humanist; Han's noble cousin Joachim Ziemssen; and Hermine Kleefeld, who, with her whistling pneumothorax, is the pride of the Half-Lung Club. In this community organization completely in reference to disease, Hans Castrop achieves a kind of transcendence unimaginable in the world of the "flatlands" below him. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Satire |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2005045964 |
| Lexile Measure: 1350 |
| Series: Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics |
| Physical Information: 1.61" H x 5.32" W x 8.14" (1.85 lbs) 904 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1900-1919 - Cultural Region - Central Europe - Cultural Region - Germany |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps-a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an "ordinary young man" who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.
Acclaimed translator John E. Woods has given us the definitive English version of Mann's masterpiece. A monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, The Magic Mountain is an enduring classic. |