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Thomas Mann was 25 when he finished Buddenbrooks, a two-volume novel about the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck, the Baltic port where he was born in 1875. Twenty-eight years later the Swedish Academy gave him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature “principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks”. Four years after that he left Germany, and he spent the rest of his life in exile in Switzerland and the United States, writing Doctor Faustus in California and recording monthly anti-Nazi broadcasts for the BBC. He died in Zurich in 1955. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1901–1954 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Thomas Mann wrote eight novels and a series of novellas. The best known are Buddenbrooks (1901), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924) and Doctor Faustus (1947). Start with Buddenbrooks, the book the Nobel committee named; below you will find all 12 key books in order and a reading path.
Where to Start with Thomas Mann
If you want the book the Nobel Prize named
→ Buddenbrooks (1901) — four generations of one family, in a novel he finished at 25.
If you want something short first
→ Death in Venice (1912) — a novella you can read in an evening.
If you want his great novel of ideas
→ The Magic Mountain (1924) — seven years in a sanatorium above Davos.
If you want his reckoning with Nazi Germany
→ Doctor Faustus (1947).
12 Thomas Mann Books, in Order
Buddenbrooks
Four generations of a grain-trading family in Lübeck, from the 1830s to the 1870s, as the firm and the family’s will to run it slowly fall away; the last heir, Hanno, cares only for music. Mann drew on his own family, which had been in the grain trade in the same city. The Nobel committee cited it in 1929, and it has been filmed several times, in 1959 and 2008 among others.
Tonio Kröger
A young writer from a northern German town feels shut out both from the ordinary, happy people he loved as a boy and from the bohemian artists in Munich. A journey north to Denmark brings the people of his youth back in front of him. It first appeared in the collection Tristan (1903).
Royal Highness
Prince Klaus Heinrich, heir of a small and nearly bankrupt German grand duchy, lives a life made entirely of public duty until he falls for Imma Spoelmann, the daughter of an American billionaire. Their marriage rescues the state’s finances. It is his lightest novel, written in the years after his own marriage to Katia Pringsheim in 1905.
Death in Venice
Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated and disciplined writer in his fifties, travels to Venice, becomes obsessed with a Polish boy, Tadzio, staying at his hotel on the Lido, and stays on while cholera spreads through the city. Luchino Visconti filmed it in 1971 and Benjamin Britten turned it into an opera in 1973.
The Magic Mountain
Hans Castorp, a young engineer from Hamburg, goes up to a tuberculosis sanatorium near Davos to visit his cousin for three weeks and stays seven years. Around him the patients argue about reason, death, love and politics, above all the humanist Settembrini and the radical Naphta, until the First World War brings him down the mountain. It was filmed in 1982.
Mario and the Magician
A German family on holiday at an Italian seaside resort goes to see a performance by Cipolla, a hypnotist who humiliates his audience one by one until a young waiter, Mario, takes his revenge. Published in 1930, it has been read ever since as a story about fascism and the power of a crowd-pleaser over a crowd.
Joseph and His Brothers
Four novels, published from 1933 to 1943, that retell the story of Jacob and Joseph from Genesis at length: Joseph sold by his brothers, his years in Egypt and his rise to feed the country in a famine. It is his longest work, written largely in exile, and he began it while still living in Munich.
Lotte in Weimar
In 1816 Charlotte Kestner, the woman Goethe used as the model for Lotte in The Sorrows of Young Werther, comes to Weimar and meets the old poet again after more than forty years. Much of the book is a portrait of Goethe as others see him, and one long chapter enters his own mind. It was first published in English as The Beloved Returns.
The Transposed Heads
Two friends in India, the thoughtful Shridaman and the strong Nanda, both love Sita, who in a temple accidentally puts each man’s head back on the other’s body. Mann treats the old legend as a comic and philosophical puzzle about which part of a person is the person.
Doctor Faustus
The schoolteacher Serenus Zeitblom writes the life of his friend Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who trades his health and his capacity for love for years of genius, while the Second World War ends in Germany’s defeat. Mann wrote it in California, advised on music by Theodor W. Adorno, and gave Leverkühn the twelve-tone method of Arnold Schoenberg, which led to a public dispute with Schoenberg in 1948.
The Holy Sinner
A retelling of the medieval legend of Gregorius, known from the poem by Hartmann von Aue: a child born of incest between a brother and sister, set adrift at sea, unknowingly marries his own mother, does penance for seventeen years on a rock and is chosen pope.
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man
The memoirs of a handsome, charming swindler who fakes illness to escape military service, works as a hotel lift boy in Paris and travels to Lisbon under a borrowed aristocratic name. Mann started the book before the First World War, published fragments in 1911 and 1922, and finished only this first part a year before his death. It was filmed in 1957 and again in 2021.
In What Order to Read Thomas Mann
None of Mann’s books continues another, so you can read them in any order. The Joseph novels are the one exception: the four volumes tell one story and should be read in sequence.
Publication order still shows how he changed: from the family novel and the short artist stories before 1914, to the long novel of ideas in the 1920s, to the books of exile, where myth, Goethe and the German catastrophe take over. Reading a novella between the long novels is a practical way through; Tonio Kröger, Death in Venice and Mario and the Magician each take an evening.
A reading path
1. Death in Venice (1912)
2. Buddenbrooks (1901)
3. The Magic Mountain (1924)
4. Mario and the Magician (1930)
5. Doctor Faustus (1947)
Everything Else Thomas Mann Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 7 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Stories and novellas
5
5 books · 1902–1953
- 1902Gladius Deia short story set in Munich
- 1903Tristanthe collection that first included Tonio Kröger
- 1905The Blood of the Walsungsa novella about twins in a rich Berlin family
- 1925Disorder and Early Sorrowa story of a family in the inflation years
- 1953The Black Swanhis last novella
Essays and speeches
2
2 books · 1918–1943
- 1918Reflections of a Nonpolitical Manhis long wartime defence of German culture against Western democracy
- 1943Listen, Germany!the anti-Nazi talks he recorded for the BBC German Service from 1940
The years · 1875–1955
Quick facts about Thomas Mann
- Known for
- Thomas Mann is known for long, ironic novels about the German middle class, art, illness and death, and for opposing Hitler from exile.
- 1875
- Born in Lübeck
- 1901
- Buddenbrooks
- 1939
- Settles in Princeton, New Jersey
- 1955
- Dies in Zurich
- Born
- 6 June 1875, Lübeck, Germany
- Died
- 12 August 1955, Zurich, Switzerland; buried in Kilchberg
- Married
- Katia Pringsheim, in 1905; six children, among them the writers Erika, Klaus and Golo Mann
- Nobel Prize
- Literature, 1929, “principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks”
- Exile
- Switzerland from 1933; Princeton from 1939; Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, from 1942
- Citizenship
- German citizenship revoked in 1936; US citizen from 1944; returned to Switzerland in 1952
The red mark is 1901: Buddenbrooks, the novel the Nobel committee named when it gave him the prize in 1929.
How Thomas Mann Writes: Irony at Length
Mann writes long, carefully balanced sentences in the voice of a narrator who stands slightly above his characters, amused and exact. The irony is the point: Royal Highness and Felix Krull are openly comic, and even Death in Venice describes Aschenbach’s collapse with the same formal calm he admired in his own prose.
He borrowed the leitmotif from Wagner: a phrase, a physical detail or an object comes back again and again to mark a character, so that a reader recognises people by their teeth, their eyes or their habits. His big novels also stop for argument. The Magic Mountain gives whole chapters to debates between Settembrini and Naphta, and to the narrator’s own reflections on how time passes in the sanatorium.
His recurring subjects are the gap between the artist and ordinary life, illness as a kind of knowledge, and German culture with its pull towards the irrational. His politics shifted on that last point: in 1918 Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man defended German tradition against Western democracy, and by 1922 he was speaking in support of the Weimar Republic. Doctor Faustus is where he follows that pull to its end in Nazi Germany.
Frequently asked questions about Thomas Mann’s books
How many books has Thomas Mann written?
Eight novels, one of them the four-volume Joseph and His Brothers, plus novellas, stories, essays and speeches. This page lists 12 key books, from Buddenbrooks (1901) to Confessions of Felix Krull (1954), and his other stories and essays below them.
What are Thomas Mann’s books in order?
Buddenbrooks (1901), Tonio Kröger (1903), Royal Highness (1909), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924), Mario and the Magician (1930), Joseph and His Brothers (1933–1943), Lotte in Weimar (1939), The Transposed Heads (1940), Doctor Faustus (1947), The Holy Sinner (1951) and Confessions of Felix Krull (1954).
Where should I start with Thomas Mann?
With Buddenbrooks, the family novel the Nobel committee named in 1929. If you want to try him in a shorter form first, read Death in Venice, which is under a hundred pages in most editions.
What is Thomas Mann’s most famous book?
The Magic Mountain (1924) and Death in Venice (1912) are the best known internationally, the second partly through Visconti’s 1971 film. The Nobel citation of 1929 named Buddenbrooks (1901).
Did Thomas Mann win the Nobel Prize?
Yes, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, “principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature.”
Why did Thomas Mann leave Germany?
He left Germany for a lecture tour in February 1933, weeks after Hitler took power, and did not go back. He lived in Switzerland, lost his German citizenship in 1936, moved to Princeton in 1939 and to Los Angeles in 1942, and became a US citizen in 1944. From 1940 he recorded monthly talks against the Nazis for the BBC German Service, later published as Listen, Germany!. In 1952 he returned to Switzerland.
What was the dispute between Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg?
In Doctor Faustus the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn invents the twelve-tone method, which was in reality Schoenberg’s. Schoenberg objected in 1948 and threatened legal action. Mann added a note at the end of later editions stating that the method is the intellectual property of Arnold Schoenberg; Schoenberg remained unhappy with its wording.
Which Thomas Mann books have been filmed?
Among others: Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti (1971), also an opera by Benjamin Britten (1973); Buddenbrooks in 1959 and 2008; The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus in 1982; and Felix Krull in 1957 and 2021.
Do I need to read the Joseph novels in order?
Yes. Joseph and His Brothers is one story in four volumes, published from 1933 to 1943, and it follows Genesis from Jacob to Joseph in Egypt. Many English editions now print all four in one book.
Is Thomas Mann still alive?
No. He died on 12 August 1955 in Zurich, aged 80, and is buried in Kilchberg on Lake Zurich. He was born on 6 June 1875 in Lübeck.
Footnotes
- Thomas Mann — Wikipedia
- Thomas Mann — Facts, NobelPrize.org
- Mann, Schoenberg and Doctor Faustus — Standpoint
- Thomas Mann filmography — Moviepilot
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”
— Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924), translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter
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