Product Description

Set in the dreamlike world of a Swiss health sanatorium, here is a story of a young man's enlightenment through his encounters with sickness and death; an elegy to the romanticism of the European bourgeoisie in the days prior World War I.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1138740 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-19
• Released on: 1998-05-19
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.50" h x 1.50" w x 5.12" l, 1.13 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

From Publishers Weekly
New translation of Mann's classic novel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
One of the most influential and celebrated German works of the 20th century has been newly rendered in English by Woods, twice winner of the PEN Translation Prize. First published in 1929, Mann's novel tells the story of Hans Castorp, a modern everyman who spends seven years in an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, finally leaving to become a soldier in World War I. Isolated from the concerns of the everyday world, he is exposed to the wide range of ideas that shaped a world on the verge of explosion. Considering what was to follow, the most poignant moment comes when Naphta, a Jewish-born Jesuit, defends the use of terror and the taking of life for the sake of an all-encompassing idea. Woods's work reads more naturally than the original translation, which, while faithful to the German, was stiff and forbidding. A necessary addition to any fiction collection.
Michael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
A sanatorium in the Swiss Alps reflects the societal ills of pre-twentieth-century Europe, and a young marine engineer rises from his life of anonymity to become a pivotal character in a story about how a human's environment affects self identity.