Explorations Read-Aloud: “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For September 19, Coté will read aloud from Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain.

Summary: With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps – a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War.

To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.

The novel is widely considered a seminal work of 20th-century German literature, notable for its philosophical depth as well as its exploration of themes such as time, illness, and modernity.

Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.