Showing results for "Buddenbrooks" in Arts & Entertainment

When Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, his debut novel “Buddenbrooks,” published in 1901, was celebrated as “the first great novel of the 20th century.” The narrative unfolds around the Buddenbrook family, prosperous owners of a wholesale grain business in Lübeck, Germany—though the city is never explicitly named, its landmarks provide a vivid backdrop inspired by Mann’s own hometown and family history. Spanning four generations during the mid-19th century, the novel, subtitled “The Decline of a Family,” masterfully illustrates the gradual ...

When Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1929), the citation made special mention of his first novel, “Buddenbrooks,” published in 1901, describing it as “the first great novel of the 20th century.”Events in the novel center on the Buddenbrook family, bourgeois owners of a wholesale grain enterprise in the northern German city of Lübeck. (The city is never named as such, but detailed references to landmarks leave no doubt that the setting is closely based on Mann’s hometown, just as the story is inspired by the Mann family history.) We follow four generations of ...