Buddenbrooks
- 669
- Pages
- about 12 h
- Reading time
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Editor’s note Thomas Mann’s first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six, follows four generations of a Lübeck merchant family modelled on his own, from 1835 to 1877; its subtitle is The Decline of a Family. Lübeck readers recognised themselves in it, and some took offence. When Mann won the Nobel Prize in 1929, the committee singled out this book.
About the book
Buddenbrooks or The Buddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu.
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“Buddenbrooks is not a book I would've likely noticed or picked up had it not been for an invitation from the Thomas Mann group. German literature has never attracted me and Thomas Mann was among that class of authors whose work, I felt, was probably…”
“Quite a book - depicting in scenes of realism mixed with subtle irony - the slow downfall of the family Buddenbrook. The story is placed between 1830-1880 in the north of Germany. Mann wrote it while aged 22-25, and the book seems to grow with…”
In this book
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