The Thomas Mann Collection: Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks, and Death in Venice

By: Thomas Mann

Narrated by: Peter Noble

“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

The Thomas Mann Collection comprises unabridged recordings of three of the author’s greatest works, where intellect wrestles with emotion and tradition collides with modernity to examine the human condition across time and culture.

The titles included here are:

The Magic Mountain (1924): Hans Castorp, a young German engineer, arrives at a luxurious Alpine sanatorium to visit his ailing cousin, but what begins as a brief stay stretches into seven years, as he becomes immersed in a world of illness, introspection, and intellectual debate. With Europe on the brink of catastrophe, Castorp’s journey becomes a profound meditation on the human condition.

Buddenbrooks (1901): Drawing on Mann’s own experience as the son of a wealthy merchant in 19th-century Lübeck, his début novel follows four generations of Buddenbrooks as they struggle to maintain the family business in the face of the advent of modernity. The story paints a vivid portrait of bourgeois life, spiritual decay, and the quiet erosion of tradition.

Death in Venice (1912): This masterful meditation on art, desire, and the fatal allure of beauty follows ageing writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, to Venice in pursuit of artistic inspiration – where he becomes consumed by an obsessive love that leads him into a tragic spiral of longing and loss.

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was a renowned German novelist, short story writer, and essayist, celebrated for his exploration of complex themes, his profound psychological insight, and critique of bourgeois society.

Born into a wealthy trading family, he studied law and economics before turning to writing and had his major breakthrough with Buddenbrooks, which depicts the decline of a bourgeois family. International acclaim came with the publication of The Magic Mountain (1924), a philosophical novel set in a sanatorium that explores themes such as life, death, time and ideological conflict. His other notable works include Death in Venice (1912) and Doktor Faustus (1947). In 1929, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his significant contributions to German literature.

Mann was politically active against fascism, leading him to leave Germany in 1933 due to the rise of the Nazi regime. He lived in Switzerland and later in the United States during World War II. Despite the challenges, he continued to write and became a prominent voice against totalitarianism.

This audiobook is fully indexed. Once downloaded, each book and chapter will be listed so you can easily navigate to the individual sections.

Public Domain (P)2023 SNR Audio

Critic reviews

"It is impossible to talk seriously about the fate of Germany in the twentieth century without reference to Thomas Mann." (New Yorker)

A little disappointing

I read Magic Mountain once, and quite liked it. But this time, I found it too long, with too much philosophising, although most of the book is worth reading. The reader, Peter Noble, is perfect, though: you couldn’t wish for a better one.

Well worth your credit!

All of the books in this collection are, of course, already German classics and need no recommendation. The narration of such long and complex books can however fail the books and put the reader off. Not so in this case! Each novel comes alive and is vital. Peter Noble deserves congratulations, not just for such a massive task, but for a performance so well done! Excellent narration! Well worth a listen!

Performance

Absolutely excellent reader and interpretation of the 3 so different books- preserving soul of German in a perfect English

What a slog!

I bought this package of books because of its value and my thinking that I should finally in my seventies see why Mann is highly regarded. Buddenbrooks was not bad - sort of a long German Magnificent Ambersons but with less interesting characters and plot. The Magic Mountain, however, was hands-down the longest, most boring waste of time I have ever read - endless didactic palaver about philosophy listened to by a horrendously dull central character who does nothing but sit in a sanitorium for seven years while he pines for a woman patient he barely met and listens to the pedagogues. His slight fever is "treated" by doctors who seem to be predatory quacks. Death in Venice was mercifully short but is simply a creepy tale about on older man's homosexual attraction to a 14-year-old. When a plague hits Venice, the boy and his family leave without having had any real encounter with the man, and the man dies of the plague. Thank goodness for a good narrator; I'd never have finished the Mountain without the convenience of listening to it while walking my dog.