The Buddenbrooks

'All his powers were in decline; the only thing growing stronger in him was the conviction that all this could not last much longer, that his demise was imminent.'

The Buddenbrooks (1900) was Thomas Mann's first major success. It draws on his own family history and on his vivid memories of growing up in the commercial town of Lübeck in North Germany. The narrative traces the decline of a wealthy, established merchant family, from their height during the last decades of the nineteenth century...