Homer Greene

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Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature.<\/p>

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It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family\u2019s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks\u2019 decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.<\/p>

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