Death in Venice and Other Stories

This superb translation of <b>Death in Venice </b>and six other stories by Thomas Mann is a tour de force deserving to be the definitive text for English-speaking readers. These seven stories represent Mann's early writing career and a level of literary quality Mann himself despaired of ever again matching. In these stories he began to grapple with themes that were to recur throughout his work. In<i> Little Herr Friedemann </i> a character's carefully structured way of life is suddenly threatened by an unexpected sexual passion. In <i>Gladius Dei </i> puritanical intellect clashes with beauty. In <i>Tristan </i> Mann presents an ironic and comic account of the tension between an artist and bourgeois society. <p/>All seven of these stories are accomplished and memorable but it is <b>Death in Venice </b>that truly forms the centerpiece of the collection. The themes that Mann weaves through the shorter pieces come to a climax in this stunning novella one of the most hauntingly magnificent tales of art and self-destruction ever written.