Death in Venice, Tristan, Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann

Three of Thomas Mann's short stories come together in this Penguin Modern Classic. Death in Venice tells how a writer utterly absorbed in his work, arrives in Venice as the result of a 'youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes', and meets there a young boy by whose beauty he becomes obsessed. His pursuit of the object of his abnormal affection and its inevitable and pathetic climax is told here with the particular skill the author has for this shorter fiction. The action of Tristan takes place in a sanatorium, where the author brilliantly portrays the uncertain emotions of people who are forced to live in such places. The theme of Tonio Kroger is that of the artist striving to conform to the pattern of everyday existence. 

Penguin Classics 1973 paperback edition in good condition.