1927 Scarce First English Edition - The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann.

 

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The books: Scarce, attractive and very nice First English edition of Thomas Mann Magic Mountain, first published in german in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th-century German literature. Mann's vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous; since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism with deeper symbolic undertones. Given this complexity, each reader is obliged to interpret the significance of the pattern of events in the narrative, a task made more difficult by the author's irony. Mann was well aware of his book's elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. He later compared it to a symphonic work orchestrated with a number of themes. In a playful commentary on the problems of interpretation—"The Making of The Magic Mountain," written 25 years after the novel's original publication—he recommended that those who wished to understand it should read it twice.

The author: Paul Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.