Description

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY DAVID LUKE

Death in Venice is a story of obsession. Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but ageing writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel. Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumours that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city.

Publisher Review

"The real theme is fading creativity and the search for inspiration...A deep and highly complex drama of the psyche" * Financial Times * "This complex fin-de-siecle masterpiece...seems eerily to pre-echo the destructive decadence that would shortly shatter European civilisation itself" * The Times * "Thomas Mann's story of obsession and spiritual malaise" * Observer * "What Mann understands and laughs at, though it grips him, is the quasi-sexual attraction of beauty and philosophy...Death in Venice is one of the undisputed classics of contemporary European literature" * Independent * "Mann's obsessive story explores the complex, haunted relationship between an ageing writer and a beautiful Polish boy" * Express *