Buddenbrooks

Mann's first novel follows four generations of a prosperous merchant family in a northern German trading town, much like his native Lübeck. We see the family's weddings, business deals, quarrels, hopes and disappointments across the nineteenth century. As the Buddenbrooks gain social standing, the younger members grow more refined, more sensitive and less suited to the practical world that made the family rich. Quietly detailed and often gently comic, the book is a portrait of a way of life and of the cost of success. It brought Mann early fame and helped win him the Nobel Prize.