| the ledge files the ledge - nl - uk |
new search |
conversations books |
Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann publisher: , 1901 translated as: Buddenbrooks publisher: Querido, Amsterdam, translation: refered to by: The Tea Lords Hella S. Haasse The Radetzky March Joseph Roth Snow Orhan Pamuk
|
summary: This story of a prosperous Hanseatic family and their gradual disintegration is also a portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the 19th century to a modern uncertainty. |
| bookweb | ||
| ON THOMAS MANN'S BOOKSHELF Anna Karenina Leo N. Tolstoy, 1877 Mann's favorite book. Anna Karenina abandons her empty existence as a society wife and embarks on a doomed love affair with the passionate but emotionally bankrupt Vronsky. Hunger Knut Hamsun, 1890 Set in Oslo, this is a compelling trip into the mind of a young writer, driven by starvation to extremes of euphoria and despair. Though never quite falling into the abyss of suicide, Hamsun's narrator is forever on the verge of losing it. Mysteries Knut Hamsun, 1892 A stranger with a 'Young Werther complex' brings excitement to a quiet Norwegian town. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1795-1796 Bildungsroman about a merchant’s son, whose character is formed by love and the theater. Effi Briest Theodor Fontane, 1895 The story of a woman's adultery. The story of Effi and the Chinaman's ghost, the forest and dunes that are its setting, the stern Prussian code that makes the climax both terrible and absurd, are unique to Fontane and to German literature. The Stechlin Theodor Fontane, 1898 The Stechlin mourns the decline of the aristocracy through the lens of a narrative about a single family that bears the same name as a lake. The World as Will and Representation Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819 The German philosopher explains his thoughts about intellectual perception and abstract representation and critically analyzes Kant's ideas and teachings. The Birth of Tragedy Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872 Philosopher's classic study declares that Greek tragedy achieved greatness through a fusion of elements of Apollonian restraint and control with Dionysian components of passion and the irrational. | BOOKS BY THOMAS MANN: The Magic Mountain 1924 The story of Hans Castorp, a modern everyman who spends seven years in an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, finally leaving to become a soldier in World War I. | WHAT TO READ AFTER THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN? 'I AM A SICK MAN, I AM AN ANGRY MAN' The Idiot Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, 1868 The saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanitorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power and sexual conquest. The Plague Albert Camus, 1947 ('cycle des révoltés) The people of Oran are in the grip of a virulent plague. Cut off from the rest of the world, they each respond in their own way to the challenge of the deadly bacillus. Among them is Dr Rieux, a humanitarian and healer, and it is through his eyes that we witness the course of the epidemic. Old Goriot Honoré de Balzac, 1834 Monsieur Goriot is one of a select group of lodgers at Madame Vanquer's Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are reduced he becomes shunned and soon his only remaining visitors are two beautiful, mysterious young women. [Een winterreis] Willem Brakman, 1961 Autobiographical novel about a doctor who tries to find out about his ailing father's true Zeeland past. BILDUNGSROMANS The Sorrow of Belgium Hugo Claus, 1983 The Sorrow of Belgium centers on early adolescence, Catholicism, and on a boy turning not into a man but into that slightly different beast, a writer. - Richard Burns (The Independent) Invisible Man Ralph Ellison, 1952 A black man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce, 1914-1915 The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest of identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of his family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a testament to the artist's "eternal imagination". Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert, 1869 This novel begins with the hero - Frederic Moreau - leaving Paris and returning to the provinces and his mother. Part love story, part historical novel and satire it tells of how Moreau is driven by passion for an unattainable older woman. Little Johannes Frederik van Eeden, 1887 An allegorical fairy-tale. THE WHOLE WORLD IN A SINGLE BOOK The Discovery of Heaven Harry Mulisch, 1992 "WWII novels" On a cold night in Holland, Max Delius picks up Onno Quist, a chaotic philologist who cannot bear the banalities of everyday life. They are like fire and water. But when they learn that they were conceived on the same day, it is clear that something extraordinary is about to happen. The Flounder Günter Grass, 1977 First published in 1977, this novel is based on the fairy story 'The Fisherman and His Wife'. Multi-layered and laced with poetry and humour, it analyzes the battle of the sexes. The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil, 1930 Ulrich has no qualities in the sense that his self-awareness is completely divorced from his abilities. He is drawn into a project, the 'Parallel Campaign,' to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph's coronation in 1918. |
| Buddenbrooks 1901 This story of a prosperous Hanseatic family and their gradual disintegration is also a portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the 19th century to a modern uncertainty. | ||
| [Tonio Kröger] 1903 Burgeoning talent caught between life and art. | ||
| Death in Venice 1911 A writer loses (and finds) himself in his love for a beautiful young boy. | ||
| [Joseph und seine Brüder] 1932-1942 The old Bible story told in four parts, as an allegory on (Nazi) Germany. | ||
| Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend 1947 The story of Adrian Leverkuhn, whose extraordinary career is charted, from his precocious childhood to his tragic death. His revelation of the horrifying price he had to pay for his achievement highlights Mann's vast theme: the discord between genius and sanity. | ||
| Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man 1954 Recounts the enchanted career of the con man extraordinaire Felix Krull - a man unhampered by the moral precepts that govern the conduct of ordinary people. | ||
| Lotte in Weimar 1939 Forty years after their youthful association, Lotte Kestner, real-life heroine of Goethe's famous novel The Sorrows of Werther, makes a pilgrimage to Weimer to see Goethe. Upon her arrival, Lotte, to her surprise, is greeted as a celebrity and taken up into Goethe's set. | ||
| The Holy Sinner 1951 | ||
| : |
||
| The Ledge editor-in-chief: Stacey Knecht, info@the-ledge.com Thanks to: De digitale pioniers and Het Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Design: Maurits de Bruijn |
Copyright: Pieter Steinz, Stacey Knecht All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. |
|