Buddenbrooks

The Decline of a Family; Introduction by T. J. Reed

Introduction by T. J. Reed
Translated by John Edwards
$32.00 US
Knopf | Everyman's Library
12 per carton
On sale Oct 04, 1994 | 978-0-679-41737-8
Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt

A classic of modern literature: Buddenbrooks is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. With an introduction by T. J. Reed, and translated  by John E. Woods.

As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.

First published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles in its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.  

  • WINNER | 1929
    Nobel Prize
“A remarkable achievement . . . In Woods’s sparkling translation, the reader encounters a work that is closer in style, vocabulary, idiom, and tone to the original.”—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW“Wonderfully fresh and elegant . . . Essential reading for anyone who wishes to enter Mann’s fictional universe.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES

About

A classic of modern literature: Buddenbrooks is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. With an introduction by T. J. Reed, and translated  by John E. Woods.

As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.

First published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles in its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.  

Awards

  • WINNER | 1929
    Nobel Prize

Praise

“A remarkable achievement . . . In Woods’s sparkling translation, the reader encounters a work that is closer in style, vocabulary, idiom, and tone to the original.”—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW“Wonderfully fresh and elegant . . . Essential reading for anyone who wishes to enter Mann’s fictional universe.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES