The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann-here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustave von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom. In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. &#8220It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom, &#8221 Mann wrote. &#8220But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist’s dignity.&#8221