The Magic Mountain: Introduction by A. S. Byatt

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 21, 2005 - Fiction - 904 pages

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.

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.

 

Selected pages

Contents

II
13
2
21
At the TienappelsHans Castorps Moral State
32
3
43
TeasingViaticumInterrupted Merriment
54
Satana
64
Clarity of Mind
75
One Word Too Many
81
Humaniora
299
Research
318
Danse Macabre
340
Walpurgis Night
382
6
409
Someone Else
436
The City of God and Evil Deliverance
458
An Outburst of TemperSomething Very
488

Herr Albin
91
4
109
Excursus on the Sense of Time
120
Politically Suspect
129
Hippe
135
Analysis
146
Doubts and Considerations
153
Growing AnxietyTwo Grandfathers and a Twilight
166
The Thermometer
190
5
208
Eternal Soup and Sudden Clarity
217
My God I See It
242
Freedom
261
Mercurys Moods
268
Encyclopedia
281
An Attack Repulsed
503
Operationes Spirituales
521
Snow
555
A Good Soldier
590
7
641
Mynheer Peeperkorn
649
Vingt et un
659
Mynheer Peeperkorn Continued
681
Mynheer Peeperkorn Conclusion
729
The Great Stupor
744
Fullness of Harmony
757
Highly Questionable
778
The Great Petulance
813
The Thunderbolt
842
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
Limited preview - 2023
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
Limited preview - 1996
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
Snippet view - 1955
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Common terms and phrases

arms asked balcony beautiful Berghof bobsled body brow called Castorp thought chair Clavdia cold course cousin death Death in Venice dining hall Director Behrens door dream eyes face feel felt Ferge fever flatlands Frau Chauchat Frau Stöhr Fräulein Freemasonry gaze gentlemen glass guests hand head heard heart Herr Albin Herr Settembrini honor human humanist illness Joachim Kleefeld knew Krokowski ladies laughed lips listen living look Mann Maria Mancini matter meal mind morning mouth Mynheer Peeperkorn Naphta nature never once pale Paravant patient person pneumothorax Pribislav reason replied rest cure Rhadamanthus Russian table sanatorium seemed sense side silent simply sitting smile snow someone sort soul speak spirit spoke stared stood sure things Thomas Mann Tienappel tion took turned voice wait walked watched weeks Wehsal word young Ziemssen

References to this book

About the author (2005)

Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Germany. He was only twenty-five when his first novel, Buddenbrooks, was published. In 1924 The Magic Mountain was published, and, five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948). Thomas Mann died in 1955.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Magic Mountain: Introduction by A. S. Byatt
Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series
AuthorThomas Mann
Translated byJohn E. Woods
ContributorA. S. Byatt
Editionreprint
PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2005
ISBN1400044219, 9781400044214
Length904 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / Classics
Fiction / Literary
Fiction / Satire
  
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