or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Colour:
Image not available

 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family [Paperback]

Thomas Mann
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.89 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.10 (31%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want delivery by Friday, 24 May? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover £8.96  
Paperback £6.89  
Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more.

Book Description

29 July 1996

Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, is drawn from his own life and experience.

Subtitled The Decline of a Family, his story of a prosperous Hanseatic merchant family and their gradual disintegration is also an extraordinary portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the nineteenth century to a modern uncertainty.


Frequently Bought Together

Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family + The Magic Mountain + Death In Venice And Other Stories (Vintage Classics)
Price For All Three: £20.52

Buy the selected items together


Product details

  • Paperback: 624 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (29 July 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0749386479
  • ISBN-13: 978-0749386474
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 3.2 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 9,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

Product Description

Review

An absorbing, well-observed, almost film-like telling of a family in Lubeck over a generation or two (The Book Case Booksellers Independent )

Has extraordinary value as a document over and above its importance as literature. The friendly dispassionateness of the book, the amplitude, the final perfection of clearness, make it as satisfying as a Dürer drawing (Observer )

Book Description

In following the disintegration of a merchant family, Thomas Mann charts the destabilisation of nineteenth bourgeois values and the birth of modernism in this, his first major novel.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more


Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Generation by Generation 25 April 1999
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
(John E. Woods' new translation is highly regarded. For me, the tone of it seems a bit too contemporary for the text, but I presume it's a big advance over the previous translation which I haven't checked out.) Since this is a big complex multi-generational family saga of 730 pages, I figured I'd better draw up a list of characters as I read. However, after I had a list of about 75 characters, and sensing that there were hundreds more to come, I realized that such a list wasn't really necessary, for the book was written in such a way that it was very easy to remember who was who. This is an intimidating novel, but it turns out to be a surprisingly easy read. One also cares very much for the various characters, and has affection for them as if they were real, which they very well might have been. One is there when they are born, and when they are married, and when they die, generation by generation. It is amazing that Mann could have written such an ambitious book at such an early age (it was published in his 25th year), but it is much more than ambitious, it is very sophisticated, and very wise and profound in many ways. This is a book that can teach anyone at any age many things about human nature, or if not teach at least remind and/or clarify. I certainly feel as if I was learning a lot about the kind of social milieu my grandparents grew up in. The novel doesn't attempt to tie every single one of its "loose ends" at the end, but it has a grace and elegance that is very compelling from beginning to end. The society it portrays, in Lubeck Germany during the 19th century, is not particularly attractive one, and it is not one which one feels nostalgic for. It is gone for ever, but one does not wish it back. Number 8 on the Fireside Reading Club "A"-List, read 2/20/96.
Was this review helpful to you?
58 of 62 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars sheer perfection..... 3 Aug 2002
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
i've read Buddenbrooks twice & hope to read it again a.s.a.p.(i'm
a voracious reader so finding time is a problem!!).Having initially read "The Magic Mountain" which i also enjoyed(though
found much of the philosophical stuff difficult),Buddenbrooks was
a revelation due to the sense of place,period & Mann's ability to
create characters i really cared about...but also,just a fine
story of the life & times of one 19th century family.Its written
with such clarity,elegance & assurance that i felt Mann was giv-
ing me the biography of his own forbears.
The leisurely pace,the attention to detail(such as dress,house-
furnishings,cuisine etc)& the varying individual traits of the
family members & other characters in the book all combined to give it a sparkle & vividness which i rarely find in most modern
fiction;it seems to me that writing of this calibre is now a
thing of the past,something to be lamented along with the passing of the times the author describes.
In these very different days in which we live,its truly a
pleasure to be transported by way of literature to a past which
has gone forever..though, thanks to Mann, still there to be
discovered & meditated upon.
Am i a romantic escapist? Well...i'd have to confess i am if its an escape to a milieu of this class & quality,one that makes
you sorry when you reach the final page.To me, a shimmering
jewel of a novel. If you havent read it, i hope i may have
persuaded you to do so...just a teeny little bit ?
Was this review helpful to you?
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Buddenbrooks may look and sound to the prespective reader like a massive challenge, but Thomas Mann's first novel, published when he was 25, is remarkable for many things and not least of these is the ease with which it can be read.

Opening in 1835, it charts the lives of the Buddenbrooks through some 40 years, following the decline of this successful Hanseatic family. But Mann's magnum opus - it was cited on his 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature - is more than that: what it presents is a detailed and complex social view of a changing Germany, particularly taking in the turbulence of the revolutionary period around 1848 to the years after unification under Bismarck in 1871.

From a position of social and economic authority, the Buddenbrooks' confidence and power is overtaken by events around them until they are, finally, reduced to an insignificant echo of a former age. Their inability to move with the times, even though they are not incapable of seeing the changes around them, renders them impotent in the face of passing history.

The only Buddenbrook who survives is Antonie... not because of her flexibility however, but precisely because her childlike petulance and unquestioning faith in the status quo allows her to maintain her arrogant assumptions about the social position of the family and, therefore, her own role within it. And yet this belligerent refusal to move forward is a major factor in the family's decline.

Buddenbrooks also works so well because of Mann's dispassionate portrayal of his characters and their disappearing world. His gentle irony, particularly in terms of dealing with religion, provides the reader with a constant intellectual challenge. And, while it was first published in 1901, this is a book that never feels dated.

A little knowledge of 19th century German history helps, but is not essential to enjoying this absolutely superb novel.

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars "Don't you think, darling, the Buddenbrooks rather give themselves...
One of the best books I've ever read, probably up there with War and Peace, in that you totally get into the characters - you feel you know them, they are so brilliantly... Read more
Published 18 hours ago by sally tarbox
5.0 out of 5 stars arrived in time
I could not find it on high street so I booked it here, it made a very good surprise present.
Published 3 months ago by Gisela Andrews
3.0 out of 5 stars German Downton Abbey?
I thought that this was a mildly interesting soap opera about a 19th century German merchant family, with ideas perhaps beyond their station. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Piffle
4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed but enjoyabel read
For a saga of decline to work the events related have to have a sense of inevitability and happen because the family are doomed and fated to decay and disintegration. Read more
Published 16 months ago by vkr
1.0 out of 5 stars Shoddy editing in Kindle version
They seem to have withdrawn the Kindle edition of this edition - I'm not surprised, even amongst the uniformly shoddy editing of Kindle editions this one was terrible. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Hammersmith Resident
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary!
This is my second reading of 'Buddenbrooks'; I had previously read the translation by Helen Lowe-Porter. Read more
Published on 7 April 2011 by Will Stevens
5.0 out of 5 stars literature at its best
if you do not read another book this year please set aside tiime to read this absolute classic of German literature.........wonderful
Published on 11 Feb 2011 by H. Cusack
4.0 out of 5 stars OK - four stars for the writing, but it is just a saga about rich folk
I agree with a lot of what has already been said about this book - it is a mesmerising saga of a 19th century North German merchant's family, which definitely has the feel of an... Read more
Published on 8 Jun 2010 by E. Clarke
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent translation that maintains the authentic germanic voice.
This is a family saga exploring the interaction of artistic sensibilities with pragmatic business ideals. Read more
Published on 29 May 2010 by L. Sahu
4.0 out of 5 stars Buddenbrooks
This is the first Thomas Mann book I have read. I started reading it and found the descriptions of meals etc far too long but saying that I really got into the book and found it... Read more
Published on 27 April 2010 by Mrs. G. Lawrenson
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Discussion Replies Latest Post
Great Authors who are ignored probably because they haven't been on a reality show 51 25 minutes ago
how much can you trust an editor? 6 31 minutes ago
What are you reading now? 8053 57 minutes ago
Books that publicly embarrassed you 243 1 hour ago
Come on - why don't we write our own book right here in the fiction forum ? I'll do the first sentence, and then jump in....hold on, here we go... 7125 1 hour ago
sexual obsession 48 3 hours ago
Best and Worst SP books you've ever read! (not counting your own) 17 3 hours ago
The non author mosty harmless book club. 1601 6 hours ago
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges