Thomas Mann's later short stories published between 1925 and 1953 explore his abiding interest in human nature and his surroundings. Disorder and Early Sorrow and Mario and the Magician originate from Mann's own experiences: domestic life at the height of inflation under the early Weimar Republic; and a symbolic encounter with Fascism during an Italian holiday. The Transposed Heads: An Indian Legend is tongue-in-cheek legend set in ancient times and The Law is a subtly ironic narrative abo...

The second volume in this essential library gathers James Joyce's modernist vision, Mark Twain's American wit, Jules Verne's boundless imagination, Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure and suspense, Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic brilliance, and Bram Stoker's gothic terror alongside voices from Tolstoy to Tagore, Stendhal to Sienkiewicz. Ranging from French Enlightenment fiction to Victorian sensation novels, Russian realism to early global literature, this collection widens the canon begun in V...

Thomas Mann sets Goethe and Tolstoy side by side through a striking anecdote: a Weimar schoolmaster, once a boy, glimpsed Goethe in his garden and later met Count Leo Tolstoy by chance, as if history itself had arranged a meeting of giants. From that symbolic pairing, Mann launches a bold comparison of two writers who, though separated by century and nation, stand in the highest rank of world literature. He treats the conjunction "and" as a challenge as much as a link, inviting readers to ...

Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks opens with the prosperous merchant family gathered in their elegant Lübeck home, where playful catechism, polished manners, and carefully described rooms reveal a world of bourgeois comfort balanced on tradition and status. Tony's spirited answers, the grandfather's old-fashioned authority, the Consul's practical defense of imagination, and the arrival of guests all expose the family's affectionate closeness and the first strains between generations, class expect...

At a lavish Buddenbrook christening, the family celebrates the long-awaited birth of a first-born son, an heir who seems to promise renewal even as his frailty casts a shadow over the day. Flowers, food, clergy, and distinguished relatives fill the house, and Pastor Pringsheim presides over a ceremony that is both solemn and socially theatrical, carefully enhanced by the effort to secure Burgomaster Överdieck as godfather. When the baby receives his names and the guests come forward to kis...

Two inseparable friends. One extraordinary woman. One impossible choice.When love, loyalty, and destiny collide, the boundaries between body, mind, and identity begin to disappear. Inspired by an ancient Indian legend, The Transposed Heads follows three lives drawn into a profound dilemma that challenges the very meaning of the self.Blending psychological insight with philosophical depth, Thomas Mann explores desire, sacrifice, and the eternal question of what trul...

A celebrated writer leaves behind the demands of his carefully ordered life and travels to Venice in search of rest. What begins as a quiet retreat soon becomes an unsettling journey into the depths of beauty, longing, and self-discovery.As the city's shimmering canals and silent streets draw him further into their spell, the line between admiration and obsession begins to fade. Surrounded by elegance, memory, and the passing of time, he is forced to confront desires he believed ha...

The Library of Alexandria is an independent small business publishing house. We specialize in bringing back to live rare, historical and ancient Books. This includes manuscripts such as: classical fiction, philosophy, science, Religion, folklore, mythology, history, literature, politics and sacred texts, in addition to Secret and esoteric subjects, such as: occult, freemasonry, alchemy, hermetic, shamanism and ancient knowledge. Our Books are available in digital format. We have approximat...

**The definitive translation of 'Arguably the great German novel' (**New York Times)‘This man is mad. Of that there can no longer be any doubt, and it is pitiable that no one representing psychiatric science is part of our circle’In May 1943 a middle-aged scholar retires to his study to reflect on the life and untimely death of his friend, a once-brilliant composer and the flower of German culture. He recalls how, consumed by over-reaching...

The acclaimed, definitive translation of Mann's magnum opus‘Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?’Thomas Mann described Joseph and His Brothers as his ‘pyramid’: his towering literary achievement, although the Nazi regime tried to sabotage its first publication. This lavish, sweeping saga retells the Biblical story of Joseph, whose dreams and visions set him apart from his siblings and lead him first to slavery and ultimat...

One of the greatest works of twentieth-century European literature, in the definitive English translation‘Home and a settled life not only lay far behind, but also, and more importantly, they lay fathoms below him, and he was still climbing’It is summer time in the Swiss Alps. Hans Castorp, an ‘ordinary young man’, has arrived at an exclusive sanitorium for a brief visit to his convalescent cousin. Once there, time will lose its familiar contours, as Hans h...

**The definitive translation of 'perhaps the first great novel of the 20th century' (**New York Times)‘I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavours. Where might I be, if I were not here?’Buddenbrooks is one of the original, and greatest, of family chronicles: the story of four generations of a wealthy and bourgeois German dynasty as they experience all the anguish and rewards of human life: ...