In this novel of 1924 Thomas Mann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann) offers us a dizzyingly rich book of ideas.
The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps – a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an ‘ordinary young man’ from Hamburg who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years. During this time he succumbs both to the lure of Eros and to the intoxication of ideas.
A central theme is the subjective nature of time. An ambiguous, ironic, complex and rich work. Be prepared for a long read and a spot of intellectual vertigo.
Thomas Mann
752 pages in the Vintage Classics paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0749386429