Thomas Mann

My father said to me that I should read "Joseph and his Brothers" by Thomas Mann before I died.
After he finished the novel he found it difficult to settle to read anything else. There was nothing, it seemed, worth reading after it. I think it was the last novel he did read before he died.
The same sort of thing happened to a friend of mine who read the book. He said the same thing - what is there to read now? he asked rhetorically.
The Mann family is being written about again: a new book by Andrea Weiss called "In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain" deals with the relationships between Thomas Mann, his daughter Erika and his son Klaus. Must be worth reading since everything about the family is always worth reading.
I wonder if Thomas Mann would be published today in this commercial publishing set-up that there is now. I can't see anyone publishing "The Magic Mountain" or "Doctor Faustus" and certainly not "Joseph and his Brethren".
I'm glad though that someone once did and will now soon take my father's advice.