Ervino Pocar Book order (chronological)

Opera tra le più significative di Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus è la tragica storia di Adrian Leverkühn, un musicista tedesco che come Faust ottiene dal demonio anni di meravigliosa attività intellettuale in cambio della dannazione eterna. Scritto alla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale e nell'immediato dopoguerra, il romanzo dà voce all'atmosfera disperata di quella che fu la catastrofe della Germania. Intorno alla narrazione principale, che abbraccia tre generazioni, si muove un mondo di personaggi presentati con la sapiente maestria di un grande stilista, con accorata pietà o con mordente ironia, mentre alla trama centrale si annodano digressioni che spaziano nei campi della musica, della filosofia, della scienza.

This Faust-like and magical story of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope is a portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. It can also be seen as a plea for rigorous examination of intellectual hypocrisy.

Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature. It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor. In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.

Schoolboy Emil Sinclair boasts of a theft and finds himself blackmailed by a bully. He turns to Max Demain in whom he finds a friend and mentor. Under this strangely self-possessed figure's guidance, Emil discovers a new world of corruption and evil.