The Magic Mountain is a masterpiece of European literature by a Nobel Prize-winning author that explores the allure and degeneration of ideas in an introspective community on the eve of the Great War.

The plot is seemingly simple. Young engineer Hans Castorp from Hamburg visits the Berghof sanatorium in Switzerland to see his cousin. A slight indisposition and a prolonged fever lead the sanatorium's doctor, court advisor Behrens, to suggest he extend his stay. Ultimately, Hans Castorp decides to remain at the sanatorium for three weeks. Only those three weeks, without him realizing, turn into seven years as Hans falls in love and gets intoxicated by the ideas he hears discussed there.

THE PRESS WROTE

Famous for his irony, Thomas Mann, alongside Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud, provides the unifying essence, the love for art and imagination, that the modern world needs to avoid disintegration after the collapse of social forces and religions.

Independent Suitable for multiple readings. A novel for a lifetime and not just for a rainy afternoon.

Guardian The most significant novelist of the 20th century.

Spectator

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SERIES

The Great Narratives series includes landmark works of world prose; works by authors who broke the barrier of time and are worth reading by all as part of a compelling contemporary relevance that concerns us.