Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany. It portrays the downfall of a wealthy mercantile family of Lübeck over four generations. The book is generally understood as a portrait of the German bourgeois society throughout several decades of the 19th century. The book displays Mann's characteristic detailed style, and it was this novel which won Mann the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, although according to Mann's wife... this achievement would not have occurred without the publication of The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann started writing the book in October 1897, when he was twenty-two years old. The novel was completed three years later, in July 1900, and published in October 1901. His objective was to write a novel on the conflicts between businessman and artist's worlds, presented as a family saga, continuing in the realist tradition of 19th century works such as Stendhal's Le Rouge et le noir .
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| Author: | Thomas Mann |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Year published: | 1901 |
| Number of editions: | 48 |