Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901, when he was 26 years old. It was a literary success in Germany.
It portrays the downfall (already announced in the subtitle, Decline of a family) of a wealthy mercantile family of Lübeck over four generations. The book is generally understood as a portrait of the middle classes from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The book displays Mann's characteristic ironic and detailed style, and it was mainly this novel which made Mann gain the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.