In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.
In addition to Death in Venice , this volume includes "Mario and the Magician," "Disorder and Early Sorrow," "A Man and His Dog," "Felix Krull," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "Tristan," and "Tonio Kröger." These stories, as direct as Thomas Mann's novels are complex, are perfect illustrations of their author's belief that "a story must tell itself." Varying in theme, in style, in tone, each is in its own way characteristic of Mann's prodigious talents. From the high art of the famous title novella ("A story," Mann said, "of death...of the voluptuousness of doom"), to the irony of "Felix Krull," the early story on which he later based his comic novel The Confessions of Felix Krull , they are stunning testimony to the mastery and virtuosity of a literary giant. Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter.