'Magic Mountain (Volume Two)' Summary

The Magic Mountain, a vast, complex, ironic masterpiece, and one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, is a profound meditation on the nature of time, illness, and human existence. Set in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, it tells the story of Hans Castorp, a young German engineer who comes to visit his cousin and becomes drawn into the strange world of the sanatorium. Here he meets a cast of unforgettable characters, including Clavdia Chauchat, a beautiful Russian woman with a mysterious illness, and Settembrini, a humanist intellectual who engages Hans in endless debates about the meaning of life. As Hans's stay in the sanatorium lengthens, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the lives of the other patients and by the sanatorium itself, a microcosm of European society on the eve of World War I.