The Magic Mountain (Volume One)
Author(s): Thomas Mann, Helen Tracy Lowe-porter
Genre(s): Culture & Heritage Fiction
Narrators: Steve Gough
Number of Chapters: 49
Length: 16 hours and 20 minutes
Language: English
Thomas Mann’s epic novel depicts a decaying, corrupted European society on the eve of the First World War. Set in a luxurious sanatorium high up in the Swiss mountains, we follow the destinies of a variety of exotic characters – members of a bourgeois elite drawn from all parts of Europe. Most suffer from consumption, dream of a cure - yet are at the same time squeezing as much pleasure and distraction as they can out of a situation ever-shadowed by sickness, pain, and death. Part surreal comedy, part grim tragedy, part allegory, and part novel of ideas, Mann’s novel is regarded by many as one of the key literary texts of the twentieth century.
Summary by Steve Gough