Buddenbrooks

by Thomas Mann

Spanning four generations of a proud Lübeck merchant dynasty, Buddenbrooks traces the rise and slow disintegration of a bourgeois family across the nineteenth century, as commercial ambition gives way to introspection, illness, and decline. Thomas Mann's sweeping debut novel — the work that won him the Nobel Prize — captures marriages made and broken, fortunes won and squandered, and the fading vitality of a once-great house. Its long, patient sentences make it a rewarding text for advanced learners.