The Magic Mountain
About the book
Hans Castorp’s visit to a Swiss sanatorium turns into a stay lasting years.
Original title: Der Zauberberg
Europe · A READING GUIDE
Germany
Begin with Schlink’s short The Reader or Remarque’s front-line perspective. Mann, Döblin and Grass offer larger novels in which a family, a city or an unusual narrator becomes a way of telling history. Hesse turns towards individual identity. Erpenbeck and Sebald revisit memory through houses, photographs and interrupted lives; Hesse’s Swiss ties and Sebald’s life in exile cross national boundaries.
WHERE TO START
- The Magic MountainThomas Mann
- The Tin DrumGünter Grass
- All Quiet on the Western FrontErich Maria Remarque
Books to begin with
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Buddenbrooks
About the book
This family saga follows successive generations of a Lübeck merchant family.
The Tin Drum
About the book
Oskar Matzerath recounts Danzig and wartime history as a boy who decided to stop growing.
Original title: Die Blechtrommel
All Quiet on the Western Front
About the book
Paul Bäumer and his schoolmates encounter daily life on the First World War front.
Original title: Im Westen nichts Neues
Berlin Alexanderplatz
About the book
After leaving prison, Franz Biberkopf tries to live honestly in late-1920s Berlin.
Steppenwolf
About the book
Lonely Harry Haller enters a world that challenges his understanding of his own identity.
Original title: Der Steppenwolf
The Reader
About the book
Michael’s former affair with Hanna takes on a different meaning when he encounters her at a war-crimes trial.
Original title: Der Vorleser
Visitation
About the book
The successive inhabitants of a lakeside house trace Germany’s twentieth century.
Original title: Heimsuchung
The Emigrants
About the book
Four accounts of emigrants combine memories, photographs and traces of the Holocaust.
Original title: Die Ausgewanderten
Austerlitz
About the book
Jacques Austerlitz reconstructs his childhood and the history of a family divided by Nazism.
Kairos
About the book
An unequal love affair unfolds alongside the dissolution of East Germany.
Go, Went, Gone
About the book
A retired professor meets African refugees in Berlin and reconsiders his own life.
Context and sources
Sources on authors and their connections to this country. Specific edition details appear beside each book. Polish and English originals are not labelled as translations.
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