The Magic Mountain
- 729
- Pages
- about 13 h
- Reading time
- Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
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Editor’s note Thomas Mann began it in 1912 after visiting his wife Katia at a sanatorium in Davos, planning a short comic counterpart to Death in Venice; the First World War intervened and it grew into a novel of about a thousand pages, published in 1924. Hans Castorp comes to visit his cousin for three weeks and stays seven years. Long debates between Settembrini and Naphta fill much of it, so it rewards patience.
About the book
The Magic Mountain is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, published in November 1924 about a young and aspiring engineer Hans Castorp. While staying in the secluded world of a high-altitude sanatorium in the years leading up to 1914, Hans encounters otherworldly figures who confront him with politics, philosophy, but also romance, illness, and death. Enchanted by his love for a woman he meets in the sanatorium, which prompts him to reflect on an early and formative schoolboy romance, he stays considerably longer than originally planned.