The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

As Seen on BBC Between the Covers.

This European masterpiece from the Nobel prizewinner explores the lure and degeneration of ideas in an introverted community on the eve of the First World War. Hans Castorp is 'a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man' when he goes to visit his cousin in an exclusive sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. What should have been a three week trip turns into a seven year stay.

Hans falls in love and becomes intoxicated with the ideas he hears at the clinic - ideas which will strain and crack apart in a world on the verge of the First World War.

'Magnificent... a beautiful, feverish account of obsessive love' -- Jonathan Coe, Guardian

'The greatest German novelist of the 20th century' -- Spectator