The Buddenbrooks

The novel that earned Thomas Mann the Nobel Prize: a fabulous historical saga about the decline of a bourgeois family in the 19th century

Published in 1901, Buddenbrooks narrates the decline of a German bourgeois family throughout the 19th century. In a grand fresco that spans from 1835, when the Napoleonic wars were still remembered, to 1877, shortly before the founding of the German Empire, Mann not only captures a social decline, but also the historical forces that disrupted 19th-century existence and brought about the uncertainties of modern times. Based on his own family novel, the story also announces essential themes of his later work, such as the complex relationship between life and art, or the contrast between the public and private spheres.