1875–1955 · Lübeck, Germany · also known as Mann
Thomas Mann published his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), the decline of a merchant family like his own, at 26. Death in Venice (1912) and The Magic Mountain (1924), set in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium before World War I, made him the leading German novelist of his age; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. An outspoken opponent of the Nazis, he went into exile in Switzerland and the United States, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (1947).
Begin with Death in Venice.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Friedrich Schiller · Brothers Grimm · E. T. A. Hoffmann · Theodor Fontane · Franz Kafka · Hermann Hesse · Erich Maria Remarque
Thomas Mann published his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), the decline of a merchant family like his own, at 26. Death in Venice (1912) and The Magic Mountain (1924), set in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium before World War I, made him the leading German novelist of his age; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.
Buddenbrooks is usually considered Thomas Mann’s best-known work, followed by Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus.
Most readers start with Death in Venice.
Both refer to the same writer.
Many of Thomas Mann’s works are in the public domain; we link to free editions below.