Name: Joseph and His Brothers
Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9781400040018

This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event.

Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur.

Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version of <i>Joseph and His Brothers</i> that is worthy of Mann’s achievement, revealing the novel’s exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime. --front flap

A multi-generational saga detailing the gradual decline of a wealthy merchant family, Buddenbrooks established an enduring tradition of ironic social critique and psychological depth in German literature. Its author, Thomas Mann, crafted epic novels, novellas, and essays that subjected European intellectual life and the psychology of artists to meticulous analysis.

Career & Background

Born on June 6, 1875, in Lübeck to a merchant and senator father and a German-Brazilian mother, Thomas Mann worked on early prose sketches before achieving early renown with his debut novel. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children—Erika Mann, Klaus Mann, and Golo Mann—also became prominent German writers. In 1929, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, primarily in recognition of Buddenbrooks. As a prominent social critic, essayist, philanthropist, and anti-fascist, Mann fled to Switzerland when Hitler came to power in 1933. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, later returning to Switzerland in 1952. Through these relocations, he became one of the primary exponents of German exile literature (Exilliteratur).

Writing Style & Themes

Throughout his career as a novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Mann developed a highly symbolic and ironic style focused on the inner tensions between artistic temperament and bourgeois life. His narratives examine the psychology of the artist and the intellectual while probing the moral and cultural state of the European and German soul. To execute these critiques, Mann utilized modernizations of German and Biblical stories alongside the philosophical traditions of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

Major Works

Buddenbrooks — First published as a debut novel written when the author was twenty-five, this chronicle follows four generations of a Lübeck merchant family and served as a major reason for his 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Death in Venice — This 1912 novella explores the psychological collision between artistic discipline and obsession through an aging writer visiting Italy.
The Magic Mountain — Set in an alpine sanatorium on the eve of World War I, this 1924 novel functions as a psychological and philosophical microcosm of pre-war European society.
Joseph and His Brothers — A four-part novel sequence that reinterprets the Biblical narrative of Joseph through mythic and psychological themes.
Doctor Faustus — A tragic novel recasting the Faust legend through a modern composer whose Faustian pact allegorizes Germany's cultural and political trajectory.

This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event.

Career & Background

Writing Style & Themes

Major Works

Buddenbrooks — First published as a debut novel written when the author was twenty-five, this chronicle follows four generations of a Lübeck merchant family and served as a major reason for his 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Death in Venice — This 1912 novella explores the psychological collision between artistic discipline and obsession through an aging writer visiting Italy.
The Magic Mountain — Set in an alpine sanatorium on the eve of World War I, this 1924 novel functions as a psychological and philosophical microcosm of pre-war European society.
Joseph and His Brothers — A four-part novel sequence that reinterprets the Biblical narrative of Joseph through mythic and psychological themes.
Doctor Faustus — A tragic novel recasting the Faust legend through a modern composer whose Faustian pact allegorizes Germany's cultural and political trajectory.

Career & Background

Writing Style & Themes

Major Works

Buddenbrooks — First published as a debut novel written when the author was twenty-five, this chronicle follows four generations of a Lübeck merchant family and served as a major reason for his 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Death in Venice — This 1912 novella explores the psychological collision between artistic discipline and obsession through an aging writer visiting Italy.
The Magic Mountain — Set in an alpine sanatorium on the eve of World War I, this 1924 novel functions as a psychological and philosophical microcosm of pre-war European society.
Joseph and His Brothers — A four-part novel sequence that reinterprets the Biblical narrative of Joseph through mythic and psychological themes.
Doctor Faustus — A tragic novel recasting the Faust legend through a modern composer whose Faustian pact allegorizes Germany's cultural and political trajectory.

Career & Background

Writing Style & Themes

Major Works

Buddenbrooks — First published as a debut novel written when the author was twenty-five, this chronicle follows four generations of a Lübeck merchant family and served as a major reason for his 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Death in Venice — This 1912 novella explores the psychological collision between artistic discipline and obsession through an aging writer visiting Italy.
The Magic Mountain — Set in an alpine sanatorium on the eve of World War I, this 1924 novel functions as a psychological and philosophical microcosm of pre-war European society.
Joseph and His Brothers — A four-part novel sequence that reinterprets the Biblical narrative of Joseph through mythic and psychological themes.
Doctor Faustus — A tragic novel recasting the Faust legend through a modern composer whose Faustian pact allegorizes Germany's cultural and political trajectory.

Joseph and His Brothers,

Joseph and His Brothers,

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Career & Background

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