New Releases by Thomas Mann

An atmospheric story of obsession and inner conflict set in the oppressive heat of a Venetian summer, Death in Venice is considered to be one of Thomas Mann’s greatest works. Seized by the urge to travel, revered German writer Gustav von Aschenbach books a stay in a hotel on Venice’s Lido. There, in the oppressive summer heat, he becomes intoxicated by the beauty of a young Polish boy who is on holiday with his family. As Aschenbach's struggle between discipline and passion intensifies, Venice itself falls into the grip of disease. Despite the danger and decay around him, Aschenbach is unable to leave. Death in Venice is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in cloth with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is translated by Shaun Whiteside and features an introduction by Oxford University academic Karolina Watroba.

Death in Venice "Death in Venice", originally written in German by Thomas Mann, is a profound exploration of beauty, obsession, and mortality. Set against the lush backdrop of early 20th-century Venice, the novella intricately depicts the unraveling of Gustav von Aschenbach, an esteemed writer, who becomes consumed with an unattainable ideal of beauty embodied by a young boy, Tadzio. Mann's narrative delves into themes of artistic inspiration, the conflict between rationality and passion, and the inevitable confrontation with one's own mortality. A rich tapestry of symbolic imagery and philosophical introspection, "Death in Venice" has captivated readers since its publication, continually inspiring new interpretations and scholarly debates. Its enduring relevance lies in its universal exploration of human desires and the moral complexities that accompany them. This bilingual edition, showcasing the text in both German and English, provides an invaluable resource for language learners and literary enthusiasts alike. By presenting the novella in its original language alongside a translated version, readers are encouraged to engage more deeply with Mann's intricate style and thematic depth. About the Author Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was a distinguished German novelist and essayist whose works have had a lasting impact on European literature. Born in Lübeck, Mann's literary career spanned decades, earning him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Known for his incisive analysis of European and German society, Mann's narratives often explore the intersection of individual and social morality. "Death in Venice" is just one of his numerous masterworks, standing alongside celebrated novels such as "Buddenbrooks" and "The Magic Mountain". About Möwenstein Books Möwenstein Books specializes in producing bilingual editions of classic literary works, offering readers the opportunity to engage with texts in their original languages alongside accurate translations. Focused on fostering cross-cultural appreciation and language proficiency, Möwenstein Books provides a valuable resource for both casual readers and serious students of literature. Please note that the translation was produced using digital tools and should be considered a learning aid.

The Holy Sinner explores a subject that fascinated Thomas Mann to the end of his life - the origins of evil and evil's connection with magic. Here Mann uses a medieval legend about "the exceeding mercy of God and the birth of the blessed Pope Gregory" - illuminating the notion of original sin and transcendence of evil.

A classic, controversial book exploring German culture and identity by the author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, now back in print. When the Great War broke out in August 1914, Thomas Mann, like so many people on both sides of the conflict, was exhilarated. Finally, the era of decadence that he had anatomized in Death in Venice had come to an end; finally, there was a cause worth fighting and even dying for, or, at least when it came to Mann himself, writing about. Mann immediately picked up his pen to compose a paean to the German cause. Soon after, his elder brother and lifelong rival, the novelist Heinrich Mann, responded with a no less determined denunciation. Thomas took it as an unforgivable stab in the back. The bitter dispute between the brothers would swell into the strange, tortured, brilliant, sometimes perverse literary performance that is Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, a book that Mann worked on and added to throughout the war and that bears an intimate relation to his postwar masterpiece The Magic Mountain. Wild and ungainly though Mann’s reflections can be, they nonetheless constitute, as Mark Lilla demonstrates in a new introduction, a key meditation on the freedom of the artist and the distance between literature and politics. The NYRB Classics edition includes two additional essays by Mann: “Thoughts in Wartime” (1914), translated by Mark Lilla and Cosima Mattner; and “On the German Republic” (1922), translated by Lawrence Rainey.

Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann

In ritiro in un sanatorio, lo scrittore Spinnel si ritrova in compagnia della signora Klöterjahn, bella moglie di un uomo d’affari, arrivata al sanatorio in preda a gravi problemi polmonari. Già invaghito dell’acume della donna che lo risveglia dal torpore in cui era caduto a causa degli altri ospiti della struttura, lo scrittore rimane folgorato dopo averla convinta a suonare il pianoforte, passione che la donna ha dovuto abbandonare a causa del matrimonio. Le note del “Tristano e Isotta” di Wagner li legheranno profondamente. Tratto da “La morte a Venezia” pubblicato da Feltrinelli. Numero di caratteri: 92.025

A Major Literary Event: a brilliant new translation of Thomas Mann's first great novel, one of the two for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1900, when Mann was only twenty-five, has become a classic of modem literature -- the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. With consummate skill, Mann draws a rounded picture of middle-class life: births and christenings; marriages, divorces, and deaths; successes and failures. These commonplace occurrences, intrinsically the same, vary slightly as they recur in each succeeding generation. Yet as the Buddenbrooks family eventually succumbs to the seductions of modernity -- seductions that are at variance with its own traditions -- its downfall becomes certain. In immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modem family chronicles; it has, indeed, proved a model for most of them. Judged as the greatest of Mann's novels by some critics, it is ranked as among the greatest by all. Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.

A retelling of the life of Moses the prophet.

The correspondence of Theodor Adorno and Thomas Mann documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism spanning the years 1943-1955.

"John E. Woods is revising our impression of Thomas Mann, masterpiece by masterpiece." —The New Yorker "Doctor Faustus is Mann's deepest artistic gesture. . . . Finely translated by John E. Woods." —The New Republic Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man. Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius—both national and individual—and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.

A title in the Bristol Classical Press German Texts series, in German with English notes, vocabulary and introduction. Thomas Mann (1875-1955), was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, and "Tonio Kroger" occupies a central position in his spiritual and artistic development. A study of youth, it draws together many strands of his life and work: the duality of his parentage; his abhorrence of discipline; and the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner on his early phase of writing.

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • A monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, The Magic Mountain is an enduring classic. With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in 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.

Recounts the enchanted career of the con man extraordinaire Felix Krull--a man unhampered by the moral precepts that govern the conduct of ordinary people.

"Mann's pivotal role during the Nazi period as perhaps the most eloquent spokesman for the 'other Germany' that lived in exile means that anyone studying the history of our century must begin with him. . . . These letters are literary and cultural documents that have few equals in our age."--James K. Lyon, University of California, San Diego "Mann's pivotal role during the Nazi period as perhaps the most eloquent spokesman for the 'other Germany' that lived in exile means that anyone studying the history of our century must begin with him. . . . These letters are literary and cultural documents that have few equals in our age."--James K. Lyon, University of California, San Diego

Thomas Mann, fascinated with the concept of genius and with the richness of German culture, found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. Mann's novelistic biography of Goethe was first published in English in 1940. Lotte in Weimar is a vivid dual portrait--a complex study of Goethe and of Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who in her youth was the model for Charlotte in Goethe's widely-read The Sorrows of Young Werther. Lotte's thoughts, as she anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years, and her conversations with those in Weimar who knew the great man, allow Mann to assess Goethe's genius from many points of view. Hayden White's fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns. Thomas Mann, fascinated with the concept of genius and with the richness of German culture, found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. Mann's novelistic biography of Goethe was first published in English in 1940. Lotte in Weimar is a vivid dual portrait--a complex study of Goethe and of Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who in her youth was the model for Charlotte in Goethe's widely-read The Sorrows of Young Werther. Lotte's thoughts, as she anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years, and her conversations with those in Weimar who knew the great man, allow Mann to assess Goethe's genius from many points of view. Hayden White's fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns.

This is the novel that is the best introduction for the student of the works of Thomas Mann, an outstanding figure in German literature.

1 The tales of Jacob -- 2 Young Joseph -- 3 Joseph in Egypt -- missing 4 Joseph the provider.

Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder) is a four-part novel by Thomas Mann, written over the course of 16 years. Mann retells the familiar stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph (chapters 27-50), setting it in the historical context of the Amarna Period. Mann considered it his greatest work. The tetralogy consists of: The Stories of Jacob (Die Geschichten Jaakobs; written December 1926 to October 1930, Genesis 27-36) Young Joseph (Der junge Joseph; written January 1931 to June 1932, Genesis 37) Joseph in Egypt (Joseph in Ägypten; written July 1932 to 23 August 1936, Genesis 38-39) Joseph the Provider (Joseph, der Ernährer; written 10 August 1940 to 4 January 1943, Genesis 40-50) Mann's presentation of the ancient Orient and the origins of Judaism is influenced by Alfred Jeremias' 1904 Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients, emphasizing Babylonian influence in the editing of Genesis, and by the work of Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Mann sets the story in the 14th century BC and makes Akhenaten the pharaoh who appoints Joseph his vice-regent. Joseph is aged 28 at the ascension of Akhenaten, which would mean he was born about 1380 BC in standard Egyptian chronology, and Jacob in the mid-1420s BC. Other contemporary rulers mentioned include Tushratta and Suppiluliuma. A dominant topic of the novel is Mann's exploration of the status of mythology and his presentation of the Late Bronze Age mindset with regard to mythical truths and the emergence of monotheism. Events of the story of Genesis are frequently associated and identified with other mythic topics. Central is the notion of underworld and the mythical descent to the underworld. Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia (hiding from the wrath of Esau) is paralleled with Joseph's life in Egypt (exiled by the jealousy of his brothers), and on a smaller scale his captivity in the well; they are further identified with the "hellraid" of Inanna-Ishtar-Demeter, the Mesopotamian Tammuz myth, the Jewish Babylonian captivity as well as the Harrowing of Hell of Jesus Christ.