Literary Highly Challenging Nominations • July 2013

[paola]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

With my last nomination I'd like to nominate Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. I think it definitely qualifies as highly challenging yet it's also accessible, and it was specifically mentioned as the principal reason that Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literature.


From Goodreads:

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

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’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ 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.

In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles.

o yes, the Buddenbrooks, they are on my hit list and I've been wanting to re-read it for ages: second that, and hope it makes it to the final list. Not exactly short, but less of a doorstopper than other nominations

[Bookpossum]

I third Buddenbrooks.
I fourth De rerum natura.

[caleb72]

I'm happy to add my voice to:

Buddenbrooks
Naked Lunch
Journey to the West

[sun surfer]

Nominations are now closed. The poll will be up shortly.