Rating: 
Summary: A colossal opus from a 25 years old genius
Review: Thomas Mann, whose birthday centennial was celebrated last year not only in German but also all over the world, is the most influential German prose writter from the 20th century and The Budenbrooks is his most important work. He lived a good part of his life outside Geman, due to the persecution of the Nazi regime, in Los Angeles and afterwards in Switzerland. It seems that he never felt too much comfortable to move back to German, and may be to this, he never accomplished anything which could be compaired to the stature attained by his most celebrated book, which was deeply ingrained with the German burgeois way of life of his time. Some people say that is a kind of autobiographic novel , where many of the aspects of Thomas Mann's social sourroundings and family life were portrayed in the book, with an accuracy and sharpness of a genius, who lived life sorrounded by all kinds of problems one could imagine (homosexuality, drugs, family disputes on genius primacy) but who, at the other hand, was, in his own ways, deeply affected by burgeois values and familly affection.When the book was written Mann had only 25 years, which adds content to some theories that mathematical and other type of geniuses minds are in their prime when one reaches 30 years of age, thus explaining the exclamation of sir Bertrand Russel, that got fame long after he hit his intelectual prime.
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