The Magic Mountain: Two Volumes in One (The Heritage Press)

xviii, 343; 366 pp. Two volumes in one. Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter. With an introductory essay by the author. Illustrated with wood engravings by Felix Hoffmann. Here is the tale of Hans Castcorp, a conservative bourgeois full of orthodox and unexamined opinions whose three-week visit to a sanitarium in 1907 turns into a stay of seven years. Cut-off from ordinary life, Hans struggles with conflicting beliefs about human nature, life, death, sickness, sex, and society as well as the confusion of contradictory values that made Western culture both great and self-destructive. A triumph novel, worldwide. Author received the Nobel Prize in 1929.