Thomas Mann

One of the most influential and celebrated German works of the 20th century has been newly rendered in English by Woods, twice winner of the PEN Translation Prize. First published in 1929, Mann's novel tells the story of Hans Castorp, a modern everyman who spends seven years in an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, finally leaving to become a soldier in World War I. Isolated from the concerns of the everyday world, he is exposed to the wide range of ideas that shaped a world on the verge of explosion. Considering what was to follow, the most poignant moment comes when Naphta, a Jewish-born Jesuit, defends the use of terror and the taking of life for the sake of an all-encompassing idea. Woods's work reads more naturally than the original translation, which, while faithful to the German, was stiff and forbidding. A necessary addition to any fiction collection.

Few figures in twentieth-century literary life enjoyed such a stormy sibling relationship as the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann. This book, the first complete English-language translation of their correspondence, provides an introduction to the intimate details of their personal and professional lives. From their differing views on the First World War and the question of Germany's future after the Second to the intense rivalry that accompanied their experiences of literary success, Thomas and Heinrich Mann were brothers whose relationship was marked by intense conflict and complex ties of loyalties. Moving from Germany at the turn of the century to their American exile in Princeton and Los Angeles in the 1930s, their letters portray their struggle as novelists and socially engaged intellectuals to apprehend the momentous historical changes in Germany and their experience of American exile.