The Magic Mountain

Hans Castorp is 'a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man' when he goes to visit his cousin in an exclusive sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. What should have been a three week trip turns into a seven year stay. Hans falls in love and becomes intoxicated with the ideas he hears at the clinic - ideas which will strain and crack apart in a world on the verge of the First World War.

ISBN 0749386428   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780749386429 (What's this?)   Pages 752 Publisher Vintage   Weight (grammes) 487 Imprint Vintage   Published in London Format Paperback   Height (mm) 198 Publication date 29 Jul 1996   Width (mm) 129 Non-book description B   Spine width (mm) 37 Translator H.T. Lowe-Porter   Academic level General DEWEY 833.912

The reading experience, of fiction in particular, is a desire to connect with the author, his/her story, his/her command of language, and in particular to take the reader to a place he/she have not been before. Put otherwise, 'tell me something that I don't already know', surprise me,let me experience the book like a close friend, whose company you wish to share many times.
All these characteristics are included in The Magic Mountain of Thomas Mann. Just one example: midway through the book the main character undertakes a skying excursion and gets lost in a snow storm. The detail of this storm's descritption placed me - the reader - in the middle of the storm, I could virtually feel the snow falling, the fog preventing me from seeing, the cold taking hold of me. That is what imply when saying: 'take me somewhere where I have not been before' - Dr Jens Bastian

Death, Knowledge and the Formation of Self:the essential elements to turn a fictional novel into a magical philosophycal essay about humankind and its nature. - Valentina - Blackwell at Wellcome Collection

It is very, very funny - some of the best sentences I've ever read. It paints a great picture of an utterly corrupted society on the verge of a historical abyss - It is a sad but satirical love story, the characters are dead serious and hilarious at the same time - and it's very readable. A book that makes you think, but also laugh and cringe and cry. - Sarah-Lou Hassenpflug - Blackwell Head Office, Oxford



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