This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event.
Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur.
Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version of Joseph and His Brothers that is worthy of Mann’s achievement, revealing the novel’s exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime.
--front flap
Series
4 primary booksJoseph und seine Brüder is a 4-book series with 4 primary works first released in 1933 with contributions by Thomas Mann, H.T. Lowe-Porter, and Agenor Soares de Moura.
Reviews with the most likes.
If ever I'm asked what my favourite book is, I now have an unequivocal answer. I cannot recall any greater pleasure from reading. This is a six-star masterpiece. I'm incapable of doing it justice in a review. Of course it's not for everybody. One must have patience, one must be prepared to stop and savour this book along the way, pause for thought, digest it, consider it. Joseph and His Brothers challenges the reader, but not in the way that, say, Ulysses does. Joseph and His Brothers is beautiful and erudite. It is a joy. Take the time. Read it.
