It is summertime in the Swiss Alps. Hans Castorp, an ‘ordinary young man’, has arrived at an exclusive sanitorium for a brief visit to his convalescent cousin.Once there, time will lose its familiar contours, as Hans himself falls ill and loses himself in a landscape of dreams, beauty and eternal snow. The Magic Mountain is Thomas Mann’s masterwork: a Bildungsroman that is also an allegory of Europe before the devastations of the First World War and a profound meditation on time, art, sickness and death.John E. Woods’ virtuoso translations of Thomas Mann’s novels are widely recognized as the best versions available in English.