The Buddenbrooks - The Decline of a Family

Zusatztext “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 Informationen zum Autor ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR John E. Woods is the distinguished translator of many books — most notably Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold , for which he won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize; Patrick Süskind's Perfume , for which he again won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987; Mr. Suskind's The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story ; Doris Dörrie's Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing and What Do You Want from Me? ; and Libuse Monikova's The Façade . Mr. Woods lives in San Diego and is currently at work on a translation of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain . ABOUT THE INTRODUCER T.J. Reed is Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Previous publications include Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition and The Classical Centre: Goethe and Weimar 1775-1832 . Klappentext Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature. It 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. 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. In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann's achievement in this riveting, tragic novel. With an introduction by T. J. Reed, and translated by John E. Woods. Zusammenfassung 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.   ...

About the author

THOMAS MANN (1875–1955) was from Germany. At the age of 25, he published his first novel, Buddenbrooks. In 1924, The Magic Mountain was published, and five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948).

JOHN E. WOODS was the distinguished translator of many books — most notably Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold, for which he won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize; Patrick Süskind's Perfume, for which he again won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987; Suskind's The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story; Doris Dörrie's Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing and What Do You Want from Me?; and Libuse Monikova's The Façade. Mr. Woods died in 2023.

T. J. REED was the Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford until his retirement in 2004. Previous publications include Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition and The Classical Centre: Goethe and Weimar 1775–1832.

Summary

A classic of modern literature from Thomas Mann, here in stunning hardcover: 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.

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.

Translated by John E. Woods with an introduction by T. J. Reed.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Product details

• Authors: John Edwards, Thomas Mann, T. J. Reed, John E. Woods
• Assisted by: John Edwards (Translation), John E. Woods (Translation)
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.10.1994
• EAN: 9780679417378
• ISBN: 978-0-679-41737-8
• Series: Everyman's Library CLASSICS; Everyman's library; Contemporary Classics Series; Everyman's Library Contemporar; Everyman's Library; Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series; Contemporary Classics Series
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature