Death in Venice
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Editor’s note Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated writer past fifty, who travels to Venice to rest and becomes obsessed with Tadzio, a Polish boy staying at the same hotel on the Lido. He never speaks to him, and he stays on even as a cholera epidemic, which the authorities try to hide, spreads through the city. Luchino Visconti filmed it in 1971 with Dirk Bogarde, and Benjamin Britten made it his last opera in 1973. Mann received the Nobel Prize in 1929.
About the book
Longing and desire, beauty and death. Where else but in old Venice could one fall in love and be consumed by it like the writer Gustav Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's famous novella? Thomas Mann tells of the "onslaught of passion," of the writer's forbidden love for the beautiful boy Tadzio. But at the same time, he also recounts the outbreak of a pandemic, cholera, from which Aschenbach ultimately dies. From John Neumeier to Luchino Visconti, the novella has inspired very different artists – just as it continually invites us readers to rediscover it.
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“Unreadable. Maybe if I tried to read it in Englisch it would work, but the whole point is to improve my German so I'm moving on from this one.”
“My second book from Thomas Mann and another amazing story written in one of the best german I have read in a long time. It feels that this was written at an even higher and more complex level than Buddenbrocks. Short and wonderful. A must read.”