First published in 1924 and widely considered one of the most influential works of twentieth century German literature. Set in the years before the First Word War, it is the story of Hans Castorp, who goes to a sanatorium in the Swiss mountains with the intention of staying a few days but finds himself compelled to stay longer – until seven years have passed.

In the extract below, Hans Castorp, his cousin Joachim and their consumptive friend Karen Karstedt leave the sanatorium to visit the Bioscope cinema in Davos. Being used to the purest mountain air, the air in the cinema made their eyes smart and ‘weighed heavily in their lungs and clouded their minds in a murky fog.’ It has been suggested that the ‘rousing tale of love and murder in the court of an Oriental potentate’ is based on Sumurun directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The film made an impression on Mann when he saw it in Munich on release in 1920.

In 1928, Thomas Mann wrote an essay in which he explained that while he often went to the cinema and enjoyed watching film, ‘Film is not art, it is life and reality; and its effects, in all its mobile silence, are crudely sensational in comparison to the spiritual effects of art’.