25 May in literature

On this day in 1911 Thomas Mann visits the Lido in Venice. The visit inspired him to write Death in Venice.

Mann was born in Germany in 1875 and worked as a clerk and studied to become a journalist. In 1898 he published his first collection of stories, followed by his first novel, and one of his most famous ones, Buddenbrooks. He married in 1905 and had six children. He published many essays about great thinkers like Freud, Goethe and Nietsche and continued to write novels, for example The Magic Mountain. In 1929 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Mann moved to Switzerland and then on to the U.S. in 1938. There his published Joseph and His Brothers and Doktor Faustus. Thomas Mann died in Switzerland in 1955.

Buddenbrooks is on my TBR shelves, so let's see if I can overcome the thick book with small text and read it some time soon!