Mapped
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann
A Hanseatic grain-merchant family declines over four generations in a Baltic city Mann never names but rebuilds street by street. It is unmistakably his native Lübeck: the family's grand house on Mengstraße, the Marienkirche where they worship, the Holstentor and the quays along the Trave, and Travemünde at the river mouth where Tony holidays. The map runs from the old-town islands north-east to the Baltic resort, and brings Germany into the atlas.
5 places →
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann
An ageing German writer travels south for rest and is caught by the beauty of a boy he never speaks to, staying on as a cholera the city hushes up spreads through the summer. The map crosses the lagoon from the San Marco waterfront to the Lido, the barrier island of grand hotels and sea baths, and back into the sultry, sirocco-laden alleys of the old city.
6 places →
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
A young engineer goes up to Davos for a three-week visit to his cousin at a mountain sanatorium and stays seven years, the fever of the place and of one guest keeping him on the heights while the flatland forgets him. The map climbs from the cure-town of Davos-Platz in the valley up the funicular to the sanatorium shelf, and out onto the high slopes where a blizzard nearly ends him.
6 places →