Buddenbrooks Audiobook By Thomas Mann cover art

Buddenbrooks

The Decline of a Family

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Buddenbrooks

By: Thomas Mann
Narrated by: David Rintoul
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author's former neighbours in his native Lübeck.

As he charts the Buddenbrooks' decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence and madness, Mann ushers the reader into a world of rich vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip and earthy humour. It is perhaps the first great family saga of modern literature, and it brought to public notice a writer of world stature who, three decades later, was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. David Rintoul gives one of his finest performances in this committed and deeply moving reading.

©1993 Alfred A Knopf (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd Classics Thought-Provoking
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Masterful Storytelling • Rich Character Development • Intricate Family Saga • Philosophical Depth • Historical Authenticity

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I’m glad I read Toibin’s “The Magician” first to appreciate the autobiographical elements of Mann’s novel. The performance brought it all to life!

Outstanding

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I hadn’t read Buddenbrooks in almost 50 years but was motivated to reread it afyer reading Colm Toi in’s the Magician. I love Thomas Mann but found him easier to read as a college student because the time and hand strength needed to hold and read even his paperbacks were more than I could deal with. However having this fantastic narration available changed everything and I very happily spent all of my free time doing kitchen chores to have an excuse to keep listening!! David Rintoul was a familiar name to me because we loved him as Mr Darcy in the old BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. He clearly prepared for his reading and demonstrated excellent mastery of the text along with beautiful diction and a soothing and clear voice. I’m so looking forward to reading other David Rintoul narrations, especially the Magic Mountain. For anyone with an interest in Thomas Mann I cannot recommend this audiobook highly enough. For someone who does not know Thomas Mann - I think this would be an excellent place to start. It’s very hard for me to believe this novel was written before Mann was 30 years old - hard to believe he had so much insight at such a young age. But it will not come as a surprise that he won a Nobel Prize for his writing. I loved everything about this audiobook and am so pleased to have been motivated to revisit it. I can assure you it reads very differently now than when I was young…but I do remember loving it then as I do now although I suspect for very different reasons. I wish I could have read it in the original language but the translation AND the narration do a great job of helping to understand what must have been the original!!

Such a wonderful narration makes this long family saga more accessible

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I was hoping for John E Woods' translation of Magic Mountain to appear on Audible. It just did, as of June 2020. So I figured I'd catch up (as I had never read Buddenbrooks) with his other epic classic first. I enjoyed this multigenerational saga of a family struggling with the usual--business, marriages, relatives, inheritances, disease, death--more than I'd expected. David Rintour makes what on paper might have dragged into a character study of many engaging performers in the theater of Mann's mind. It does go on a bit towards the end, but I can see that Mann wanted to immerse an audience into the coming-of-age of a key character who'd obviously been "inspired" by his own youthful struggles, and to show how even one day under an exacting pedant could try to crush the soul of many a schoolboy. Mann's talent, echoed by Woods and Rintoul, allows us to enter into the mindsets of the mid-to-late 19th century in the aspiring mercantile class of a respectable town and for all the mundane levels this documents (we almost never get a sense of the lower ranks, tellingly I am sure), This is a skillful tale all around.

Great translation and rendering

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happy I found it and hung on every word. This book is of course of another age in style and subject, but so deeply and fully realized I felt I knew all of the characters and suffered with them.

Thought it was worth a try

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David Rintoul is an absolutely incredible reader. He does an exceptional job animating the voices, and it makes for an unforgettable audiobook experience, one of the very best I have had. The novel is a masterpiece, and thank goodness for Ukemi Audibooks which has dedicated itself to the recording of such works (and they just released a version of The Magic Mountain, which I am currently in the midst of listening to, and equally excellent). Now one can only hope for Doktor Faustus...

A true gift

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