Reading Order
Der ZauberbergThe Magic Mountain Reading Order
The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) by Thomas Mann is the great German modernist novel and the one in which Mann turned the themes of his youth into a philosophical and political summa of European civilization at the moment of its catastrophic self-destruction. Hans Castorp, a young engineer from Hamburg, goes to the Berghof sanatorium in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim and stays for seven years — becoming, during that time, the vessel through which Mann's two great intellectual adversaries (the humanist liberal Settembrini and the Jesuit-trained nihilist Naphta) debate the nature of Western civilization. The novel spans the years 1907 to 1914, ending with the outbreak of the First World War that dissolves the timeless sanatorium world; it is Mann's portrait of a Europe that preferred the narcotic pleasure of its own refined decadence to the engagement with life that might have saved it.
Where to start
The Magic Mountain (1924) — the complete novel; Buddenbrooks is valuable prior context but not required. Available in the John E. Woods translation (1995), which is the standard modern English version
Complete Der Zauberberg Book List
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Buddenbrooks
OptionalThomas Mann·1901·Optional prior context: Mann's first major novel traces the decline of a merchant family through four generations; the theme of artistic refinement and its incompatibility with vital engagement that runs through Buddenbrooks is developed philosophically in The Magic Mountain. - 1Buy
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann·1924
Der Zauberberg — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Magic Mountain about?
The Magic Mountain follows Hans Castorp, a young engineer from Hamburg, who goes to the International Sanatorium Berghof in Davos, Switzerland, to visit his cousin Joachim for three weeks and ends up staying for seven years. During those years Hans undergoes a massive and somewhat involuntary education: he is exposed to the humanist liberalism of the Italian Settembrini and the nihilistic Jesuit logic of the Polish Naphta, falls in love with the Russian Claudia Chauchat, studies anatomy, philosophy, and the nature of time, and becomes a kind of representative of pre-war European consciousness suspended above the practical world. The novel ends with the outbreak of the First World War, which destroys the sanatorium world and sends Hans — and Mann's pre-war civilization — into an abyss whose outcome is deliberately left uncertain.
Is The Magic Mountain difficult to read?
The Magic Mountain is challenging but richly rewarding — its difficulty comes not from syntactic complexity (John E. Woods's translation is clear and readable) but from its scale (over 700 pages), its deliberate slowness (Mann uses narrative time to mirror the distorted time-sense of the sanatorium), and its extensive philosophical debates (Settembrini and Naphta's arguments about the nature of civilization, progress, and death require sustained attention). Most readers who commit to it are gripped by the characters and the atmosphere; the first 100 pages can feel slow, but the novel's world becomes increasingly absorbing as Hans's years accumulate. The ideal reader is someone who loves ideas as well as characters, and who enjoys a novel that takes time seriously as a subject.
How does The Magic Mountain relate to Buddenbrooks?
Buddenbrooks (1901) and The Magic Mountain (1924) are Mann's two greatest novels and the two poles of his achievement. Buddenbrooks is a nineteenth-century realist novel about a specific family's material and spiritual decline, readable in the tradition of Fontane and Tolstoy. The Magic Mountain is a twentieth-century modernist novel that uses the sanatorium as a microcosm of European civilization and the debate between Settembrini and Naphta as a philosophical diagnosis of why that civilization was destroying itself. The themes are continuous — the incompatibility of artistic refinement and vital engagement, the relationship between beauty, illness, and death — but the forms are completely different. Most readers find Buddenbrooks more immediately accessible; The Magic Mountain more philosophically profound.
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