Thomas Mann Books In Order

Joseph and His Brothers Books In Order

  1. Young Joseph (1935)
  2. Joseph in Egypt (1938)
  3. Joseph the Provider (1944)

Novels

  1. Royal Highness (1916)
  2. Buddenbrooks (1924)
  3. The Magic Mountain (1924)
  4. The Beloved Returns (1939)
  5. Doctor Faustus (1947)
  6. The Holy Sinner (1951)
  7. Confessions of Felix Krull (1955)

Collections

  1. Mario and The Magician (1930)
  2. Stories Of Three Decades (1936)
  3. The Tables of the Law (1947)
  4. Six Early Stories (2000)
  5. Collected Stories (2001)
  6. A Very German Christmas (2020)

Novellas

  1. Early Sorrow (1929)
  2. The Transposed Heads (1941)
  3. The Black Swan (1954)

Non fiction

  1. Bashan and I (1923)
  2. Past Masters (1933)
  3. Order of the Day (1942)
  4. Essays of Three Decades (1947)
  5. Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889-1955 (1955)
  6. Diaries, 1918-1939 (1982)
  7. Thomas Mann Diaries (1984)
  8. The Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900-1949 (1998)
  9. The Hesse / Mann Letters (2005)
  10. Goethe and Tolstoy (2005)
  11. Correspondence (2006)
  12. Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (2021)

Joseph and His Brothers Book Covers

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Thomas Mann Books Overview

Royal Highness

Royal Highness, first published in 1909, represents Thomas Mann’s effort to lighten ‘the serious and weighty naturalism’ he had inherited from the 19th century into a work of art at once intellectual and symbolic, ‘a transparency for ideas to shine through.’

Buddenbrooks

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 surpas*ses 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.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Magic Mountain

Mann began working on The Magic Mountain in 1912, following a few weeks’ visit to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Twelve years later the novel that had begun as a short story appeared in two long volumes. The war that had postponed the book’s completion had ‘incalculably enriched its content.’ Now it was a massive meditation on ‘the inner significance of an epoch, the pre war period of European history.’ It was an immense international success from the time of its publication. The Magic Mountain is the story of an unassuming, undistinguished young engineer named Hans Castorp who sits on the balcony of a sanatorium, wrapped in his camel’s hair blanket, thermometer in his mouth, naively but earnestly pondering the meaning of life, time, and his love for the beautiful Frau Chauchat. Among the other characters on this Germanic ship of fools are the malapropian Frau Stohr; Hofrat Behrens, the head doctor, and his hearty but sick looking sidekick, Dr. Krokowski; Ludovico Settembrini, the enlightened humanist; Han’s noble cousin Joachim Ziemssen; and Hermine Kleefeld, who, with her whistling pneumothorax, is the pride of the Half Lung Club. In this community organization completely in reference to disease, Hans Castrop achieves a kind of transcendence unimaginable in the world of the ‘flatlands’ below him.

The Beloved Returns

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 as*sess Goethe’s genius from many points of view. Hayden White’s fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns.

Doctor Faustus

The new translation, by the masterly John E. Woods, of one of Thomas Mann’s most famous and important novels: his modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which twentieth century Germany sells its soul to the devil. Mann’s protagonist, Adrian Leverk hn, is one of the most significant characters in the literature of our era, for it is in him that Mann centers the tragedy of Germany’s seduction by evil. This modern Faust is a great artist: Leverk hn is a musical genius who trades body and soul in a Mephistophelian bargain for twenty four years of triumph as the world’s greatest composer. He is isolated, brilliant, a radical experimenter who both plays and thinks at the very edges of artistic possibility. The story of his life becomes an apocalyptic narrative of his country’s moral collapse as it surges into the catastrophe of World War II. No simple symbolic figure, Leverk hn is himself, almost paradoxically, a morally driven man in the vortex of an entire culture’s self destruction. Through the wonderful and terrible story of Leverk hn’s life and death, Mann not only gave us his most profound writing on the very nature and heart of all art how it is created and how it impinges on every aspect of our experience: artistic, religious, political, sexual, psychological but also forced his countrymen the novel was first published fifty years ago, in 1947 to come face to face with how they had fallen prey to all that was most lethal in their heritage.

The Holy Sinner

First published in 1951, 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’ as he used the Biblical account of Joseph as the basis for Joseph and His Brothers illuminating with his ironic sensibility the notion of original sin and transcendence of evil.

Confessions of Felix Krull

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.

The Tables of the Law

‘Brilliant…
a little masterpiece.’ Chicago Sun Times Book Week’Can rank with the best of Mann’s writing.’ The Boston Globe’Magnificent…
one of the greatest bits of writing which one of the world’s greatest writers has ever given us.’ Chicago Herald American’Brilliant…
one of those splendid novelettes which in this reviewer’s opinion represent the very essence of Mr. Mann’s literary art.’ Saturday Review of LiteratureThe Tables of the Law recounts the early life of Moses, his preparations for leading his people out of Egypt, the exodus itself and the incidents at the oasis Kadesh, and the engraving of the stone tables of the law at Sinai. In Thomas Mann’s ironic and telling style, this most dramatic and significant story in the Hebrew Bible takes on a new and at times, witty life and meaning. Like Joseph and His Brothers, it represents Mann’s art at its best. He who dares to retell the story of the exodus must be bold, but to succeed he must be inspired as well. Here one would say Mann was inspired. Newly translated from the German by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann. Thomas Mann 1875 1955 won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. His many works include Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and Confessions of Felix Krull.

Six Early Stories

When they think of the stories of the great German writer Thomas Mann, most American readers will recall Stories of Three Decades, translated in 1936; however, that edition purposely excluded several early tales of Mann which the translator found ‘tentative and awkward efforts.’ As noted translator and editor of this volume Burton Pike notes, however, ‘Times and interests change; in 1936 Thomas Mann, in exile from Na*zi Germany, was celebrated as a leading spokesman for the threatened humanistic values of Western Civilization.’ His early development seemed unimportant within that context, but such a judgment now seems arbitrary and wrong. Indeed the six stories of this volume are all quite wonderful examples of this genre, and even more revelatory with regard to Mann’s themes and styles. Experimenting with a complex, multi layered narrative, Mann explored new approaches to the psychologies of his characters with a ‘strong, fresh voice of a major talent.”These early stories, ably translated by Peter Constantine and edited by Burton Pike, are well worth reading. They are also a welcome addition to the body of Mann’s work in English. But they are something more. They remind us of what has been lost in the dissolution and passing of modernism. The boldness, daring and risk taking in both formal, technical matters and in explicit, thematic explorations remain as admirable today as they were a century ago.’ Steven Marcus, New York Times Book Review

Early Sorrow

1928. Mann, German essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Among Mann’s most famous works are Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain. His novels usually explore the relationship between the exceptional individual and his or her environment, the environment of family, or of the world in general. Early Sorrow is among his later writings and are tales about parental love.

The Black Swan

Thomas Mann’s bold and disturbing novella, written in 1952, is the feminine counterpart of his masterpiece Death in Venice. Written from the point of view of a woman in what we might now call mid life crisis, The Black Swan evinces Mann’s mastery of psychological analysis and his compelling interest in the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in human behavior. It is startlingly relevant to current discussions of the politics of the body, male inscriptions of the feminine, and discourse about and of women. The new introduction places this dramatic novella in the context of contemporary feminist and literary concerns, bringing it to the attention of a new generation of readers.

Bashan and I

Bashan and I is the moving story of Thomas Mann’s relationship with his spirited German short haired pointer. From their first encounter at a local farm, Mann reveals how he slowly grows to love this energetic, loyal, and intelligent animal. Taking daily walks in the nearby parkland, Mann begins to understand and appreciate Bashan as a living being, witnessing his native delight in chasing rabbits, deer, and squirrels along with his careful investigations of stones, fallen branches, and clumps of wet leaves. As their bond deepens, Mann is led to contemplate Bashan’s inner life, and marvels at the ease with which his dog trusts him, completely putting his life into his master’s hands. Over time, the two develop a deep mutual understanding, but for Mann, there is always a sense of loss at never being able to enter the private world of his dear friend, and he slowly becomes conscious of the eternal divide between mankind and the rest of nature. Nonetheless, the unique relationship quietly moves to the forefront of Mann’s life, and when master and companion are briefly separated, Mann is taken aback by the depth of his loneliness without his dog. It is this deep affection for another living creature that helps the writer to reach a newfound understanding of the nature of love, in all its complexity. First published in 1916 and translated into English in 1923, Bashan and I was heralded for its simple telling of how a dog became a priceless companion, an animal who brought meaning to the author’s life.

Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889-1955

This selection of Thomas Mann’s letters, first published in a Vintage edition in 1975, spans sixty six years from the first, written by a precocious fourteen year old, to the last, composed on his deathbed by the eighty year old Nobel Laureate, and includes letters to family and to such celebrated contemporaries as Gide, Freud, Brecht, Einstein, Hesse, Schoenberg, and Adorno. Covering two world wars and exile in Europe and America, Mann’s letters offer the reader insight into the concerns and values of one of the great writers of our time.

The Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900-1949

Fortunately for us, brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann remained devoted and eloquent correspondents even while disagreeing passionately on matters literary, political, philosophical, and personal. In their correspondence, set against a shifting backdrop of locations in Europe and America, mundane concerns blend easily with astonishing artistic and critical insights. That these irrepressible siblings were among the giants of twentieth century letters gives their exchanges unique literary and historical fascination. Beginning in Germany and Italy at the turn of the century, the letters document with disarming immediacy the brothers’ views on aesthetics, politics, and the social responsibility of the writer, as well as their mutual jealousy, admiration, rivalry, and loyalty. The devastating rift caused by Thomas’s support of Germany during World War I and his brother’s utter opposition to the war took many years to mend, but they found their way back to friendship in the 1920s. After Hitler rose to power, both writers ultimately sought refuge in the United States. The letters offer a moving portrayal of their struggle, as novelists and socially engaged intellectuals, to bear witness to the cataclysmic historical changes around them and to their experience of exile, in Europe and then in America. This first complete English translation of their correspondence is a dramatic human dialogue and a major literary event.

The Hesse / Mann Letters

The letters present two great XX century Nobel Prize writers grieving for the ruined world. In the 1930s and 1940s, they rail against the stupidity of war and the cowardice of diplomats, against the social savagery of the Na*zis, against the blind forces of abstraction and nationalism. They brood about the fate of Germany and of Europe after the last shots have been fired. They have lived through a time of extraordinary horror and yet they have not surrendered to despair or nihilism. Reading the letters, the reader will feel like some privileged guest in a special room, sitting off to the side somewhere, listening while these men talk.

Correspondence

In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to consider, with me, how such a work and I mean Leverkhns work could more or less be practically realized. Their close collaboration on questions concerning the character of the fictional composers putatively late works Adorno produced specific sketches which are included as an appendix to the present volume effectively laid the basis for a further exchange of letters. The ensuing Correspondence between the two men documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism which would be sustained right up until the novelists death in 1955. In the letters, Thomas Mann openly acknowledged his fascinated reading of Adornos Minima Moralia and commented in detail on the Essay on Wagner, which he was as eager to read as the one in the Book of Revelation consumes a book which tastes as sweet as honey. Adorno in turn offered detailed observations upon and frequently enthusiastic commendations of Manns later writings, such as The Holy Sinner, The Betrayed One and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Their Correspondence also touches upon issues of great personal significance, notably the sensitive discussion of the problems of returning from exile to postwar Germany. The letters are extensively annotated and offer the reader detailed notes concerning the writings, events and personalities referred or alluded to in the Correspondence.

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