| ||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.90
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Magic Mountain (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.90, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Book Description
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.
Product Description
With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize for 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.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
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
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Take your time reading this 'Matterhorn' of European literature. You'll need a break from time to time to regain your breath but don't worry, the mountain will still be there for you to just pick up where you left off. John E. Woods is definitely the translator to read with all of Mann's novels. Forget the old translations of Lowe-Porter, now widely ridiculed by scholars as misleading of Mann's true voice.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
having read another translation, and been struck by theinconsistencies of the work, I was delighted to re-read this work in the Everyman edition, and was immediately impressed by my greater understanding of this iconic work, helped certainly by the introduction by AS Byatt. For those of you not German literate, I would heartily recommend this edition as a first read. The print is also comfortable to read, and a quality piece of printing - well done to Everyman!
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have wanted to read this book for a long time, and decided to take the plunge on discovering this new translation by John E Woods. This is a monster of a book - at 854 closely typeset pages, it is going to take a long time to read - in my case, the best part of a month. My opinion on finishing is that if you like this sort of thing its tremendously rewarding, but even still its going to be a difficult read at times, and you will find that some of the dense philosophical dialogue will need to be skim-read if you are not going to get bogged down.
There are many think I liked about it:
- A unique setting and situation - the patients at a Swiss Sanatorium in the 77 years preceding World War 1;
- The closed world Mann creates with its obsessions and rivalries, its artificial manners and routines. This is a unique fictitious society, but one that is entirely credible in view of the situation its inhabitants find themselves in;
- The way it so perfectly captures the state of mind of the patients, their adaptation to their illness and the way they have found a community that accepts them as they are;
- The creation of a timeless world where months merge into one another and years pass without notice;
- The way the sanatorium is a microcosm of Europe in the early part of the 20th century, with all the national conflicts in the wider world being played out in this intense community of tuberculosis sufferers.
- The perfect descriptions of obsessive states of mind that can be developed in such situations, imaginary love affairs, supernatural occurrences, intense antagonisms on the one hand and alliances on the other.
On the downside, the characters in the novel are incredibly verbose. When they speak, they go on for pages, and you have to picture the other people in the conversations standing politely waiting for the speaker to finish before they launch off into their own equally dense replies. However, this is all part of Mann's creation of "timelessness", and if you want to read this book in a hurry you're going to miss the point.
The translation is modern and natural and while I do not read German, I suspect that the spirit of the author comes through the pages.
I am pleased to have read this and feel quite a sense of achievement. My only regret is that I felt the ending is a bit hurried (remarkable for this book!), and is not entirely satisfactory. However, undoubtedly a pillar of 20th century literature, this book should not be missed - if you have the time to read it.
There are many think I liked about it:
- A unique setting and situation - the patients at a Swiss Sanatorium in the 77 years preceding World War 1;
- The closed world Mann creates with its obsessions and rivalries, its artificial manners and routines. This is a unique fictitious society, but one that is entirely credible in view of the situation its inhabitants find themselves in;
- The way it so perfectly captures the state of mind of the patients, their adaptation to their illness and the way they have found a community that accepts them as they are;
- The creation of a timeless world where months merge into one another and years pass without notice;
- The way the sanatorium is a microcosm of Europe in the early part of the 20th century, with all the national conflicts in the wider world being played out in this intense community of tuberculosis sufferers.
- The perfect descriptions of obsessive states of mind that can be developed in such situations, imaginary love affairs, supernatural occurrences, intense antagonisms on the one hand and alliances on the other.
On the downside, the characters in the novel are incredibly verbose. When they speak, they go on for pages, and you have to picture the other people in the conversations standing politely waiting for the speaker to finish before they launch off into their own equally dense replies. However, this is all part of Mann's creation of "timelessness", and if you want to read this book in a hurry you're going to miss the point.
The translation is modern and natural and while I do not read German, I suspect that the spirit of the author comes through the pages.
I am pleased to have read this and feel quite a sense of achievement. My only regret is that I felt the ending is a bit hurried (remarkable for this book!), and is not entirely satisfactory. However, undoubtedly a pillar of 20th century literature, this book should not be missed - if you have the time to read it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
