Reprint of the original 1924 English translation edition! Buddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the bourgeoisie. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu. It was Mann's first novel, published when he was twenty-six years old. Buddenbrooks became a major literary success. The work led to a Nobel Prize in Literature for Mann in 1929. Although the Nobel award generally recognizes an author's body of work, the Swedish Academy identified "his great novel Buddenbrooks" as the principal reason for his prize.