This month we will be reading

Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods

“Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature. It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.” (Good Reads)

We strongly recommend this 1994 translation by John E. Woods. His translation is considered closer to the original than the 1924 translation by Helen T. Lowe-Porter.

Fiction, 731 pages

We hope you can join us for a discussion of this intimate portrayal of 19th Century German society.

Please note: We are planning a day trip in late summer to Lübeck, the provincial German City where Thomas Mann was born and where this Buddenbrooks takes place. Details forthcoming.