Joseph and His Brothers: Book 1 cover art

Joseph and His Brothers: Book 1

The Tales of Jacob

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About this listen

 Published over a ten-year period between 1933 and 1943, Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his Brothers is an epic four-part novel that works as a retelling of chapters twenty-one to thirty of the Book of Genesis. Described as a “Mythological novel”, It took Mann over sixteen years to write the novel and was considered by the writer as his greatest ever literary achievement.

in this first volume subtitled ‘The Stories of Jacob’, Mann begins with a meditative prelude named “Descent into Hell”, which contextualises the story against a variety of historical, mythological, and historical contexts, before moving on to the story of Joseph’s father Jacob. The following chapters follow Jacob as we learn of him stealing his brother’s birthright, before fleeing to his uncle Laban and his later marriages to Rachel and Leah.

Deploying Mann’s signature capacity for incredible, often mesmerising detail, Joseph and His Brothers brings to life a world of mythology and legend, set within the ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. The result is an immersive, awe-inspiring work of psychological depth – one that is replete with historical detail, ironic humour, and breathtaking grandeur.

This recording is based on John E. Woods definitive English translation, providing an authoritative retelling that is worthy of Mann’s landmark work.©1930 Thomas Mann (P)2025 W. F. Howes Ltd Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Witty
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I was a bit uncertain at first about reading this book but it was a pleasant surprise to find it so interesting.

Pleasantly surprised

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It's an irony to me that the reading of this novel many years ago first enabled me to read the actual biblical stories as precisely that, narratives worked and reworked whose purpose is both to justify and criticize the human, which is to say the political, and Mann displays the same brilliance as in the Magic Mountain but works subtle humour into his narrative which the narrator is adept at bringing out in his reading. I truly hope this production allows more people to savour the joy of what is to me Mann's finest achievement, like Anthony Brigg's transaltion of War and Peace, Woods offers his audience a novel that flows in English, which should be the primary purpose of translation and never a wooden 'literalism'. Absolutely superb,

Mann's Monument

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