The Magic Mountain

A visit to a Swiss sanatorium leads to seven years spent outside ordinary time.

As Seen on BBC Between the Covers

Hans Castorp arrives at a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin, intending to stay for just three weeks. But illness, routine, and the strange atmosphere of the mountain draw him in.

Life at the Berghof

Life at the Berghof is measured by:

• Meals
• Temperatures
• Rest cures
• Conversations

Around Hans gather doctors, patients, and intellectual rivals whose ideas about progress, death, desire, and civilisation begin to shape his own thinking.

A Transformative Stay

As his stay extends to seven transformative years:

• He falls in love.
• He becomes absorbed by the mountain’s suspended world.

A Civilisation Nearing Crisis

But below the sanatorium, Europe is moving towards the First World War. The mountain air seems to clarify everything, then clouds it.

Time stretches. Arguments repeat. Snow falls. Bodies weaken. Hans’s stay becomes a slow apprenticeship in the habits, temptations, and evasions of a civilisation nearing crisis.